THE 

PASSIONATE 
FRIENDS 


A    NOVEL 
BY 

H.  G.  WELLS 

AUTHOR  OF 
"ANN  VERONICA"  ETC. 


"There  are  at  least  two  sorts  of  women  ' 

—OTTO  LlMBURGER 


ILLUSTRATED 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS   PUBLISHERS 

NEW   YORK    AND    LONDON 

MCMXIII 


PRINTED  IN  THE   UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 
PUBLISHED    OCTOBER.     1913 


L-N 


TO 
L.  E.  N.  S. 


283185 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  MR.  STRATTON  TO  HIS  SON i 

II.  BOYHOOD 14 

III.  INTENTIONS  AND  THE  LADY  MARY  CHRISTIAN    ...  40 

IV.  THE  MARRIAGE  OF  THE  LADY  MARY  CHRISTIAN    .     .  73 

V.  THE  WAR  IN  SOUTH  AFRICA 102 

VI.  LADY  MARY  JUSTIN 132 

VII.  BEGINNING  AGAIN 197 

VIII.  THIS  SWARMING  BUSINESS  OF  MANKIND 220 

IX.  THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  NEW  WORLD 246 

X.  MARY  WRITES 280 

XI.  THE  LAST  MEETING 318 

XII.  THE  ARRAIGNMENT  OF  JEALOUSY 358 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 


THE 
PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

CHAPTER    THE    FIRST 
MR.  STRATTON  TO  HIS  SON 


[  WANT  very  much  to  set  down  my  thoughts  and  my 
1  experiences  of  life.  I  want  to  do  so  now  that  I  have 
come  to  middle  age  and  now  that  my  attitudes  are  all 
defined  and  my  personal  drama  worked  out .  I  feel  that 
the  toil  of  writing  and  reconsideration  may  help  to  clear 
and  fix  many  things  that  remain  a  little  uncertain  in 
my  thoughts  because  they  have  never  been  fully  stated, 
and  I  want  to  discover  any  lurking  inconsistencies  and 
unsuspected  gaps.  And  I  have  a  story.  I  have  lived 
through  things  that  have  searched  me.  I  want  to  tell 
that  story  as  well  as  I  can  while  I  am  still  a  clear-headed 
and  active  man,  and  while  many  details  that  may  pres- 
ently become  blurred  and  altered  are  still  rawly  fresh  in 
my  mind.  And  to  one  person  in  particular  do  I  wish  to 
think  I  am  writing,  and  that  is  to  you,  my  only  son.  I 
want  to  write  my  story  not  indeed  to  the  child  you  are 
now,  but  to  the  man  you  are  going  to  be.  You  are  half 

i 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

my  blood  and  temperamentally  altogether  mine.  A  day 
will  come  when  you  will  realize  this,  and  want  to  know 
how  life  has  gone  with  me,  and  then  it  may  be  altogether 
too  late  for  me  to  answer  your  enquiries.  I  may  have 
become  inaccessible  as  old  people  are  sometimes  inac- 
cessible. And  so  I  think  of  leaving  this  book  for  you — 
at  any  rate,  I  shall  write  it  as  if  I  meant  to  leave  it  for 
you.  Afterwards  I  can  consider  whether  I  will  indeed 
leave  it.  ... 

The  idea  of  writing  such  a  book  as  this  came  to  me 
first  as  I  sat  by  the  dead  body  of  your  grandfather — 
my  father.  It  was  because  I  wanted  so  greatly  such  a 
book  from  him  that  I  am  now  writing  this.  He  died, 
you  must  know,  only  a  few  months  ago,  and  I  went  to 
his  house  to  bury  him  and  settle  all  his  affairs. 

At  one  time  he  had  been  my  greatest  friend.  He  had 
never  indeed  talked  to  me  about  himself  or  his  youth, 
but  he  had  always  showed  an  extraordinary  sympathy 
and  helpfulness  for  me  in  all  the  confusion  and  per- 
plexities into  which  *I  fell.  This  did  not  last  to  the  end 
of  his  life.  I  was  the  child  of  his  middle  years,  and  sud- 
denly, in  a  year  or  less,  the  curtains  of  age  and  infirmity 
fell  between  us.  There  came  an  illness,  an  operation, 
and  he  rose  from  it  ailing,  suffering,  dwarfed  and  alto- 
gether changed.  Of  all  the  dark  shadows  upon  life  I 
think  that  change  through  illness  and  organic  decay  in 
the  thoughts  and  spirits  of  those  who  are  dear  and  close 
to  us  is  the  most  evil  and  distressing  and  inexplicable. 
Suddenly  he  was  a  changeling,  a  being  querulous  and 
pitiful,  needing  indulgence  and  sacrifices. 

In  a  little  while  a  new  state  of  affairs  was  established. 
I  ceased  to  consider  him  as  a  man  to  whom  one  told 

2 


MR.    STRATTON   TO   HIS    SON 

things,  of  whom  one  could  expect  help  or  advice.  We 
all  ceased  to  consider  him  at  all  in  that  way.  We  hu- 
mored him,  put  pleasant  things  before  him,  concealed 
whatever  was  disagreeable.  A  poor  old  man  he  was  in- 
deed in 'those  concluding  years,  weakly  rebellious  against 
the  firm  kindliness  of  my  cousin,  his  housekeeper  and 
nurse.  He  who  had  once  been  so  alert  was  now  at  times 
astonishingly  apathetic.  At  times  an  impish  malice  I 
had  never  known  in  him  before  gleamed  in  little  acts  and 
speeches.  His  talk  rambled,  and  for  the  most  part  was 
concerned  with  small,  long-forgotten  contentions.  It  was 
indistinct  and  difficult  to  follow  because  of  a  recent  loss  of 
teeth,  and  he  craved  for  brandy,  to  restore  even  for  a 
moment  the  sense  of  strength  and  well-being  that  ebbed 
and  ebbed  away  from  him.  So  that  when  I  came  to  look 
at  his  dead  face  at  last,  it  was  with  something  like  amaze- 
ment I  perceived  him  grave  and  beautiful — more  grave 
and  beautiful  than  he  had  been  even  in  the  fullness  of 
life. 

All  the  estrangement  of  the  fiflfl  years  was  wiped 
in  an  instant  from  my  mind -as  I  looked  upon  his  face. 
There  came  back  a  rush  of  memories,  of  kind,  strong, 
patient,  human  aspects  of  his  fatherhood.  And  I  re- 
'"membered  as  every  son  must  remember — even  you,  my 
dear,  will  some  day  remember  because  it  is  in  the  very 
nature  of  sonship — insubordinations,  struggles,  ingrati- 
tudes, great  benefits  taken  unthankfully,  slights  and 
disregards.  It  was  not  remorse  I  felt,  nor  repentance, 
but  a  tremendous  regret  that  so  things  had  happened 
and  that  life,  should  be  so.  Why  is  it,  I  thought,  that 
when  a  son  has  come  to  manhood  he  cannot  take  his 
father  for  a  friend?  I  had  a  curious  sense  of  unprece- 

3 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

dented  communion  as  I  stood  beside  him  now.  I  felt 
that  he  understood  my  thoughts;  his  face  seemed  to  an- 
swer with  an  expression  of  still  and  sympathetic  patience. 

I  was  sensible  of  amazing  gaps.  We  had  never  talked 
together  of  love,  never  of  religion. 

All  sorts  of  things  that  a  man  of  twenty-eight  would 
not  dream  of  hiding  from  a  coeval  he  had  hidden  from  me. 
For  some  days  I  had  to  remain  in  his  house,  I  had  to  go 
through  his  papers,  handle  all  those  intimate  personal 
things  that  accumulate  around  a  human  being  year  by 
year — letters,  yellowing  scraps  of  newspaper,  tokens,  relics 
kept,  accidental  vestiges,  significant  litter.  I  learnt  many 
things  I  had  never  dreamt  of.  At  times  I  doubted 
whether  I  was  not  prying,  whether  I  ought  not  to  risk 
the  loss  of  those  necessary  legal  facts  I  sought,  and  burn 
these  papers  unread.  There  were  love  letters,  and  many 
such  touching  things. 

My  m^nories  of  him  did  not  change  because  of  these 
new  lighl^  but  they  became  wonderfully  illuminated. 
I  realized  him  as  a  young  man,  I  began  to  see  him  as  a  boy. 
I  found  a  little  half -bound  botanical  book  with  stencil- 
tinted  illustrations,  a  good-conduct  prize  my  father  had 
won  at  his  preparatory  school;  a  rolled-up  sheet  of  paper, 
carbonized  and  dry  and  brittle,  revealed  itself  as  a  piece  of 
specimen  writing,  stiff  with  boyish  effort,  decorated  in 
ambitious  and  faltering  flourishes  and  still  betraying  the 
pencil  rulings  his  rubber  should  have  erased.  Already 
your  writing  is  better  than  that.  And  I  found  a  daguerreo- 
type portrait  of  him  in  knickerbockers  against  a  photog- 
rapher's stile.  His  face  then  was  not  unlike  yours.  I 
stood  with  that  in  my  hand  at  the  little  bureau  in  his 
bedroom,  and  looked  at  his  dead  face. 

4 


MR.    STRATTON   TO   HIS    SON 

The  flatly  painted  portrait  of  his  father,  my  grand- 
father, hanging  there  in  the  stillness  above  the  coffin, 
looking  out  on  the  world  he  had  left  with  steady,  humorous 
blue  eyes  that  followed  one  about  the  room, — that,  too, 
was  revivified,  touched  into  reality  and  participation  by 
this  and  that,  became  a  living  presence  at  a  conference  of 
lives.  Things  of  his  were  there  also  in  that  life's  accu- 
mulation. .  .  . 

There  we  were,  three  Strattons  together,  and  down 
in  the  dining-room  were  steel  engravings  to  take  us  back 
two  generations  further,  and  we  had  all  lived  full  lives, 
suffered,  attempted,  signified.  I  had  a  glimpse  of  the 
long  successions  of  mankind.  What  a  huge  inaccessible 
lumber-room  of  thought  and  experience  we  amounted  to, 
I  thought;  how  much  we  are,  how  little  we  transmit. 
Each  one  of  us  was  but  a  variation,  an  experiment  upon 
the  Stratton  theme.  All  that  I  had  now  under  my  hands 
was  but  the  merest  hints  and  vestiges,  movinjj  and  sur- 
prising indeed,  but  casual  and  fragmentai^  of  those 
obliterated  repetitions.  Man  is  a  creature  becoming 
articulate,  and  why  should  those  men  have  left  so  much 
of  the  tale  untold — to  be  lost  and  forgotten?  Why  must 
we  all  repeat  things  done,  and  come  again  very  bitterly 
to  wisdom  our  fathers  have  achieved  before  us?  My 
grandfather  there  should  have  left  me  something  better 
than  the  still  enigma  of  his  watching  face.  All  my  life 
so  far  has  gone  in  learning  very  painfully  what  many  men 
have  learnt  before  me;  I  have-  spent  the  greater  part  of 
forty  years  in  finding  a  sort  of  purpose  for  the  uncertain 
and  declining  decades  that  remain.  Is  it  not  time  the 
generations  drew  together  and  helped  one  another? 
Cannot  we  begin  now  to  make  a  better  use  of  the  experi- 

5 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

ences  of  life  so  that  our  sons  may  not  waste  themselves 
so  much,  cannot  we  gather  into  books  that  men  may  read 
in  an  hour  or  so  the  gist  of  these  confused  and  multitu- 
dinous realities  of  the  individual  career  ?  Surely  the  time 
is  coming  for  that,  when  a  new  private  literature  will 
exist,  and  fathers  and  mothers  behind  their  r61es  of  rulers, 
protectors,  and  supporters,  will  prepare  frank  and  intimate 
records  of  their  thought  and  their  feeling,  told  as  one  tells 
things  to  equals,  without  authority  or  reserves  or  discre- 
tions, so  that,  they  being  dead,  their  children  may  re- 
discover them  as  contemporaries  and  friends. 

That  desire  for  self-expression  is  indeed  already  almost 
an  instinct  with  many  of  us.  Man  is  disposed  to  create 
a  traditional  wisdom.  For  me  this  book  I  contemplate 
is  a  need.  I  am  just  a  year  and  a  half  from  a  bitter  tragedy 
and  the  loss  of  a  friend  as  dear  as  life  to  me.  It  is  very 
constantly  in  my  mind.  She  opened  her  mind  to  me  as 
few  people  open  their  minds  to  anyone.  In  a  way,  little 
Stephen,  S^e  died  for  you.  And  I  am  so  placed  that  I 
have  no  one  to  talk  to  quite  freely  about  her.  The  one 
other  person  to  whom  I  talk,  I  cannot  talk  to  about  her; 
it  is  strange,  seeing  how  we  love  and  trust  one  another,  but 
so  it  is;  you  will  understand  that  the  better  as  this  story 
unfolds.  For  eight  long  years  before  the  crisis  that 
culminated  in  her  tragic  death  I  never  saw  her;  yet, 
quite  apart  from  the  shock  and  distresses  of  that  time,  it 
has  left  me  extraordinarily  lonely  and  desolate. 

And  there  was  a  kind  of  dreadful  splendor  in  that  last 
act  of  hers,  which  has  taken  a  great  hold  upon  my  imagina- 
tion; it  has  interwoven  with  everything  else  in  my  mind, 
it  bears  now  upon  every  question.  I  cannot  get  away  from 
it,  while  it  is  thus  pent  from  utterance.  .  .  .  Perhaps 

6 


MR.    STRATTON   TO   HLS    SON 

having  written  this  to  you  I  may  never  show  it  you  or 
leave  it  for  you  to  see.  But  yet  I  must  write  it.  Of  all 
conceivable  persons  you,  when  you  have  grown  to  man- 
hood, are  the  most  likely  to  understand. 


§2 

You  did  not  come  to  see  your  dead  grandfather,  nor 
did  you  know  very  much  about  the  funeral.  Nowadays 
we  do  not  bring  the  sweet  egotisms,  the  vivid  beautiful 
personal  intensities  of  childhood,  into  the  cold,  vast 
presence  of  death.  I  would  as  soon,  my  dear,  have  sent 
your  busy  little  limbs  toiling  up  the  Matterhorn.  I  have 
put  by  a  photograph  of  my  father  for  you  as  he  lay  in 
that  last  stillness  of  his,  that  you  will  see  at  a  properer 
time. 

Your  mother  and  I  wore  black  only  at  his  funeral 
and  came  back  colored  again  into  your  colored  world, 
and  in  a  very  little  while  your  interest  in  this  event 
that  had  taken  us  away  for  a  time  turned  to  other,  more 
assimilable  things.  But  there  happened  a  little  incident 
that  laid  hold  upon  me ;  you  forgot  it,  perhaps,  in  a  week  or 
less,  but  I  shall  never  forget  it;  and  this  incident  it  was 
that  gathered  up  the  fruits  of  those  moments  beside 
my  father's  body  and  set  me  to  write  this  book.  It  had 
the  effect  of  a  little  bright  light  held  up  against  the  vague 
dark  immensities  of  thought  and  feeling  that  filled  my 
mind  because  of  my  father's  death. 

Now  that  I  come  to  set  it  down  I  see  that  it  is  altogether 
trivial,  and  I  cannot  explain  how  it  is  that  it  is  to  me  so 
piercingly  significant.  I  had  to  whip  you.  Your  respect 

7 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

for  the  admirable  and  patient  Mademoiselle  Potin,  the 
protectress  and  companion  of  your  public  expeditions, 
did  in  some  slight  crisis  suddenly  fail  you.  In  the  extreme 
publicity  of  Kensington  Gardens,  in  the  presence  of  your 
two  little  sisters,  before  a  startled  world,  you  expressed  an 
opinion  of  her,  in  two  languages  and  a  loud  voice,  that 
was  not  only  very  unjust,  but  extremely  offensive  and 
improper.  It  reflected  upon  her  intelligence  and  goodness ; 
it  impeached  her  personal  appearance;  it  was  the  kind  of 
outcry  no  little  gentleman  should  ever  permit  himself, 
however  deeply  he  may  be  aggrieved.  You  then,  so  far 
as  I  was  able  to  disentangle  the  evidence,  assaulted  her 
violently,  hurled  a  stone  at  her,  and  fled  her  company. 
You  came  home  alone  by  a  route  chosen  by  yourself, 
flushed  and  wrathful,  braving  the  dangers  of  Kensington 
High  Street.  This,  after  my  stern  and  deliberate  edict 
that,  upon  pain  of  corporal  punishment,  respect  and 
obedience  must  be  paid  to  Mademoiselle  Potin.  The 
logic  of  the  position  was  relentless. 

But  where  your  behavior  was  remarkable,  where  the 
affair  begins  to  touch  my  imagination,  was  that  you 
yourself  presently  put  the  whole  business  before  me. 
Alone  in  the  schoolroom,  you  seem  to  have  come  to  some 
realization  of  the  extraordinary  dreadfulness  of  your 
behavior.  Such  moments  happen  in  the  lives  of  all 
small  boys;  they  happened  to  me  times  enough,  to  my 
dead  father,  to  that  grandfather  of  the  portrait  which  is 
now  in  my  study,  to  his  father  and  his,  and  so  on  through 
long  series  of  Strattons,  back  to  inarticulate,  shock-haired 
little  sinners  slinking  fearfully  away  from  the  awful 
wrath,  the  bellowings  and  limitless  violence  of  the  hairy 
Old  Man  of  the  herd.  The  bottom  goes  out  of  your 


MR.    STRATTON   TO   HIS    SON 

heart  then,  you  are  full  of  a  conviction  of  sin.  So  far 
you  did  but  carry  on  the  experience  of  the  race.  But 
to  ask  audience  of  me,  to  come  and  look  me  in  the  eye, 
to  say  you  wanted  my  advice  on  a  pressing  matter,  that 
I  think  marks  almost  a  new  phase  in  the  long  developing 
history  of  father  and  son.  And  your  account  of  the  fracas 
struck  me  as  quite  reasonably  frank  and  honest.  "I 
didn't  seem  able,"  you  observed,  "not  to  go  on  being 
badder  and  badder." 

We  discussed  the  difficulties  of  our  situation,  and  you 
passed  sentence  upon  yourself,  I  saw  to  it  that  the  out- 
raged dignity  of  Mademoiselle  Potin  was  mocked  by  no 
mere  formality  of  infliction.  You  did  your  best  to  be 
stoical,  I  remember,  but  at  last  you  yelped  and  wept. 
Then,  justice  being  done,  you  rearranged  your  costume. 
The  situation  was  a  little  difficult  until  you,  still  sobbing 
and  buttoning — you  are  really  a  shocking  bad  hand  at 
buttons — and  looking  a  very  small,  tender,  ruffled,  rueful 
thing  indeed,  strolled  towards  my  study  window.  "The 
pear  tree  is  out  next  door,"  you  remarked,  without  a  trace 
of  animosity,  and  sobbing  as  one  might  hiccough. 

I  suppose  there  are  moments  in  the  lives  of  all  grown 
men  when  they  come  near  to  weeping  aloud.  In  some 
secret  place  within  myself  I  must  have  been  a  wild  river 
of  tears.  I  answered,  however,  with  the  same  admirable 
detachment  from  the  smarting  past  that  you  had  achieved, 
that  my  study  window  was  particularly  adapted  to  the 
appreciation  of  our  neighbor's  pear  tree,  because  of  its 
height  from  the  ground.  We  fell  into  a  conversation 
about  blossom  and  the  setting  of  fruit,  kneeling  together 
upon  my  window-seat  and  looking  up  into  the  pear  tree 
against  the  sky,  and  then  down  through  its  black  branches 

9 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

into  the  gardens  all  quickening  with  spring.  We  were  on 
so  friendly  a  footing  when  presently  Mademoiselle  Potin 
returned  and  placed  her  dignity. or  her  resignation  in 
my  hands,  that  I  doubt  if  she  believed  a  word  of  all  my 
assurances  until  the  unmistakable  confirmation  of  your 
evening  bath.  Then,  as  I  understood  it,  she  was  extremely 
remorseful  to  you  and  indignant  against  my  violence.  .  .  . 

But  when  I  knelt  with  you,  little  urchin,  upon  my 
window-seat,  it  came  to  me  as  a  thing  almost  intolerably 
desirable  that  some  day  you  should  become  my  real 
and  understanding  friend.  I  loved  you  profoundly.  I 
wanted  to  stretch  forward  into  time  and  speak  to  you, 
man  myself  to  the  man  you  are  yet  to  be.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  between  us  there  must  needs  be  peculiar 
subtleties  of  sympathy.  And  I  remembered  that  by  the 
time  you  were  a  man  fully  grown  and  emerging  from  the 
passionately  tumultuous  openings  of  manhood,  capable 
of  forgiving  me  all  my  blundering  parentage,  capable  of 
perceiving  all  the  justifying  fine  intention  of  my  ill- 
conceived  disciplines  and  misdirections,  I  might  be  either 
an  old  man,  shriveling  again  to  an  inexplicable  egotism, 
or  dead.  I  saw  myself  as  I  had  seen  my  father — first  en- 
feebled and  then  inaccessibly  tranquil.  When  presently 
you  had  gone  from  my  study,  I  went  to  my  writing-desk  and 
drew  a  paper  pad  towards  me,  and  satHhinking  and  mak- 
ing idle  marks  upon  it  with  my  pen.  I  wanted  to  exceed 
the  limits  of  those  frozen  silences  that  must  come  at  last 
between  us,  write  a  book  that  should  lie  in  your  world  like 
a  seed,  and  at  last,  as  your  own  being  ripened,  flower  into 
living  understanding  by  your  side. 

This  book,  which  before  had  been  only  an  idea  for  a 
book,  competing  against  many  other  ideas  and  the  de- 

10 


MR.    STRATTON   TO   HIS    SON 

mands  of  that  toilsome  work  for  peace  and  understanding 
to  which  I  have  devoted  the  daily  energies  of  my  life, 
had  become,  I  felt,  an  imperative  necessity  between  us. 


§3 

And  then  there  happened  one  of  those  crises  of  dread 
and  apprehension  and  pain  that  are  like  a  ploughing  of 
the  heart.  It  was  brought  home  to  me  that  you  might 
die  even  before  the  first  pages  of  this  book  of  yours  were 
written.  You  became  feverish,  complained  of  that  queer 
pain  you  had  felt  twice  before,  and  for  the  third  time  you 
were  ill  with  appendicitis.  Your  mother  and  I  came  and 
regarded  your  touzled  head  and  flushed  little  face  on  the 
pillow  as  you  slept  uneasily,  and  decided  that  we  must 
take  no  more  risks  with  you.  So  soon  as  your  temperature 
had  fallen  again  we  set  about  the  business  of  an  operation. 

We  told  each  other  that  nowadays  these  operations 
were  as  safe  as  going  to  sleep  in  your  bed,  but  we  knew 
better.  Our  own  doctor  had  lost  his  son.  "That,"  we 
said,  "was  different."  But  we  knew  well  enough  in  our 
hearts  that  you  were  going  very  near  to  the  edge  of  death, 
nearer  than  you  had  ever  been  since  first  you  came 
clucking  into  the  world. 

The  operation  was  done  at  home.  A  capable,  fair- 
complexioned  nurse  took  possession  of  us;  and  my  study, 
because  it  has  the  best  light,  was  transfigured  into  an 
admirable  operating-room.  All  its  furnishings  were  sent 
away,  every  cloth  and  curtain,  and  the  walls  and  floor 
were  covered  with  white  sterilized  sheets.  The  high 
little  mechanical  table  they  erected  before  the  window 

ii 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

seemed  to  me  like  an  altar  on  which  I  had  to  offer  up  my 
son,  There  were  basins  of  disinfectants  and  towels  con- 
veniently about,  the  operator  came,  took  out  his  array 
of  scalpels  and  forceps  and  little  sponges  from  the  black 
bag  he  carried,  put  them  ready  for  his  hand,  and  then 
covered  them  from  your  sight  ;with  a  white  cloth,  and  I 
brought  you  down  in  my  arms,  wrapped  in  a  blanket,  from 
your  bedroom  to  the  anaesthetist.  You  were  beautifully 
trustful  and  submissive  and  unafraid.  I  stood  by  you 
until  the  chloroform  had  done  its  work,  and  then  left  you 
there,  lest  my  presence  should  in  the  slightest  degree 
embarrass  the  surgeon.  The  anaesthetic  had  taken  all  the 
color  out  of  your  face,  and  you  looked  pinched  and  shrunken 
and  greenish  and  very  small  and  pitiful.  I  went  into  the 
drawing-room  and  stood  there  with  your  mother  and 
made  conversation.  I  cannot  recall  what  we  said,  I 
think  it  was  about  the  moorland  to  which  we  were  going 
for  your  convalescence.  Indeed,  we  were  but  the  ghosts 
of  ourselves;  all  our  substance  seemed  listening,  listening 
to  the  little  sounds  that  came  to  us  from  the  study. 

Then  after  long  ages  there  was  a  going  to  and  fro  of 
feet,  a  bump,  the  opening  of  a  door,  and  our  own  doctor 
came  into  the  room  rubbing  his  hands  together  and  doing 
nothing  to  conceal  his  profound  relief.  "Admirable,"  he 
said,  "altogether  successful."  f  I  went  up  to  you  and  saw 
a  tumbled  little  person  in  the  bed,  still  heavily  insensible 
and  moaning  slightly.  By  the  table  were  bloody  towels, 
and  in  a  shallow  glass  tray  was  a  small  object  like  a 
damaged  piece  of  earthworm.  "Not  a  bit  too  soon,"  said 
the  surgeon,  holding  this  up  in  his  forceps  for  my  inspec- 
tion. "  It's  on  the  very  verge  of  perforation."  I  affected 
a  detached  and  scientific  interest,  but  the  prevailing 

12 


MR.    STRATTON   TO   HIS    SON 

impression  in  my  mind  was  that  this  was  a  fragment  from 
very  nearly  the  centre  of  your  being. 

He  took  it  away  with  him,  I  know  not  whither.  Per- 
haps it  is  now  in  spirits  in  a  specimen  jar,  an  example  to 
all  medical  students  of  what  to  avoid  in  an  appendix; 
perhaps  it  was  stained  and  frozen,  and  microtomized  into 
transparent  sections  as  they  do  such  things,  and  mounted 
on  glass  slips  and  distributed  about  the  world  for  curious 
histologists  to  wreak  their  eyes  upon.  For  a  time  you  lay 
uneasily  still  and  then  woke  up  to  pain.  Even  then  you 
got  a  fresh  purchase  on  my  heart.  It  has  always  been  our 
custom  to  discourage  weeping  and  outcries,  and  you  did 
not  forget  your  training.  "I  shan't  mind  so  much, 
dadda,"  you  remarked  to  me,  "if  I  may  yelp."  So  for  a 
day,  by  special  concession,  you  yelped,  and  then  the  sting 
of  those  fresh  wounds  departed. 

Within  a  fortnight,  so  quickly  does  an  aseptic  wound 
heal  up  again,  you  were  running  about  in  the  sun,  and 
I  had  come  back,  as  one  comes  back  to  a  thing  forgotten, 
to  the  first  beginnings  of  this  chapter  on  my  desk.  But 
for  a  time  I  could  not  go  on  working  at  it  because  of  the 
fear  I  had  felt,  and  it  is  only  now  in  June,  in  this  house 
in  France  to  which  we  have  come  for  the  summer,  with 
you  more  flagrantly  healthy  than  I  have  ever  known  you 
before,  that  my  heart  creeps  out  of  its  hole  again,  and  I 
can  go  on  with  my  story. 

2 


CHAPTER  THE   SECOND 
BOYHOOD 


I  WAS  a  Harbury  boy  as  my  father  and  grandfather 
were  before  me  and  as  you  are  presently  to  be.  I  went 
to  Harbury  at  the  age  of  fourteen.  Until  then  I  was 
educated  at  home,  first  by  a  governess  and  then  by  my 
father's  curate,  Mr.  Siddons,  who  went  from  us  to  St. 
Philip's  in  Hampstead,  and,  succeeding  marvellously 
there,  is  now  Bishop  of  Exminster.  My  father  became 
rector  of  Burnmore  when  I  was  nine;  my  mother  had 
been  dead  four  years,  and  my  second  cousin,  Jane  Stratton, 
was  already  his  housekeeper.  My  father  held  the  living 
until  his  resignation  when  I  was  nearly  thirty.  So  that 
all  the  most  impressionable  years  of  my  life  centre  upon 
the  Burnmore  rectory  and  the  easy  spaciousness  of  Burn- 
more  Park*  My  boyhood  and  adolescence  alternated  be- 
tween the  ivied  red-brick  and  ancient  traditions  of  Har- 
bury (and  afterwards  Christ-church)  and  that  still  un- 
troubled countryside. 

I  was  never  a  town  dweller  until  I  married  and  we 
took  our  present  house  in  Holland  Park.  I  went  into 
London  at  last  as  one  goes  into  an  arena.  It  cramps 
me  and  wearies  me  and  at  times  nearly  overwhelms  me, 

14 


BOYHOOD 

but  there  it  is  that  the  life  of  men  centres  and  my  work 
lies.  But  every  summer  we  do  as  we  have  done  this 
year  and  go  to  some  house  in  the  country,  near  to  forests 
or  moorland  or  suchlike  open  and  uncultivated  country, 
where  one  may  have  the  refreshment  of  freedom  among 
natural  and  unhurried  things.  This  year  we  are  in  a 
walled  garden  upon  the  Seine,  about  four  miles  above 
Chateau  Galliard,  and  with  the  forest  reaching  up  to  the 
paddock  beyond  the  orchard  close.  .  .  . 

You  will  understand  better  when  I  have  told  you  my 
story  why  I  saw  Burnmore  for  the  last  time  when  I  was 
one-and-twenty  and  why  my  memories  of  it  shine  so 
crystalline  clear.  I  have  a  thousand  vivid  miniatures 
of  it  in  my  mind  and  all  of  them  are  beautiful  to  me,  so 
that  I  could  quite  easily  write  a  whole  book  of  land- 
scapes from  the  Park  alone.  I  can  still  recall  quite  vividly 
the  warm  beauty-soaked  sensation  of  going  out  into  the 
morning  sunshine  of  the  Park,  with  my  lunch  in  a  little 
green  Swiss  tin  under  my  arm  and  the  vast  interminable 
day  all  before  me,  the  gigantic,  divinely  unconditional  day 
that  only  boyhood  knows,  and  the  Park  so  great  and 
various  that  it  was  more  than  two  hours'  going  for  me  to 
reach  its  eastern  fences.  I  was  only  a  little  older  then 
than  you  are  now.  Sometimes  I  went  right  up  through 
the  woods  to  the  house  to  companion  with  Philip  and  Guy 
Christian  and  their  sister — I  loved  her  then,  and  one  day 
I  was  to  love  her  with  all  my  heart — but  in  those  boyish 
times  I  liked  most  to  go  alone. 

My  memories  of  the  Park  are  all  under  blue  sky  and 
sunshine,  with  just  a  thunderstorm  or  so;  on  wet  days 
and  cold  days  I  was  kept  to  closer  limits;  and  it  seems  to 
me  now  rather  an  intellectual  conviction  than  a  positive 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

memory  that  save  for  a  few  pine-clad  patches  in  the 
extreme  south-east,  its  soil  was  all  thick  clay.  That 
meant  for  me  only  beautiful  green  marshes,  a  number  of 
vividly  interesting  meres  upon  the  course  of  its  stream, 
and  a  wealth  of  gigantic  oaks.  The  meres  lay  at  various 
levels,  and  the  hand  of  Lady  Ladislaw  had  assisted  nature 
in  their  enrichment  with  lilies  and  water  plants.  There 
were  places  of  sedge  and  scented  rush,  amidst  which  were 
sapphire  mists  of  forget-me-not  for  long  stretches,  skir- 
mishing commandoes  of  yellow  iris  and  wide  wastes  of 
floating  water-lilies.  The  gardens  passed  insensibly  into 
the  Park,  and  beyond  the  house  were  broad  stretches  of 
grass,  sun-lit,  barred  with  the  deep-green  shadows  of  great 
trees,  and  animated  with  groups  and  lines  of  fallow  deer. 
Near  the  house  was  an  Italianate  garden,  with  balustrad- 
ings  and  statuary,  and  a  great  wealth  of  roses  and  flower- 
ing shrubs. 

Then  there  were  bracken  wildernesses  in  which  the 
does  lurked  with  the  young  fawns,  and  a  hollow,  shallow 
and  wide,  with  the  turf  greatly  attacked  by  rabbits,  and 
exceptionally  threadbare,  where  a  stricken  oak,  lightning- 
stripped,  spread  out  its  ghastly  arms  above  contorted 
rotting  branches  and  the  mysterious  skeletons  of  I  should 
think  five  several  deer.  In  the  evening-time  the  woods 
behind  this  place  of  bones — they  were  woods  of  straight- 
growing,  rather  crowded  trees  and  standing  as  it  were  a 
little  aloof — became  even  under  the  wannest  sunset  grey 
and  cold — and  as  if  they  waited.  .  .  . 

And  in  the  distant  corner  where  the  sand  was,  rose 
suddenly  a  steep  little  hill,  surmounted  by  a  wild  and 
splendid  group  of  pines,  through  which  one  looked  across 
a  vale  of  cornfields  at  an  ancient  town  that  became 

16 


BOYHOOD 

strange  and  magical  as  the  sun  went  down,  so  that  I  was 
held  gazing  at  it,  and  afterwards  had  to  flee  the  twilight 
across  the  windy  spaces  and  under  the  dim  and  darkling 
trees.  It  is  only  now  in  the  distant  retrospect  that  I 
identify  that  far-off  city  of  wonder,  and  luminous  mist 
with  the  commonplace  little  town,  through  whose  narrow 
streets  we  drove  to  the  railway  station.  But,  of  course, 
that  is  what  it  must  have  been. 

There  are  persons  to  be  found  mixed  up  in  those  childish 
memories, — Lady  Ladislaw,  tall  and  gracious,  in  dresses 
of  floating  blue  or  grey,  or  thin,  subtly  folding,  flowering 
stuffs,  Philip  and  his  sister,  Guy,  the  old  butler,  a  multi- 
tude of  fainter  figures  long  become  nameless  and  feature- 
less; they  are  far  less  vivid  in  my  memory  than  the  fine 
solitudes  of  the  Park  itself — and  the  dreams  I  had  there. 

I  wonder  if  you  dream  as  I  dreamt.  I  wonder  whether 
indeed  I  dreamt  as  now  I  think  I  did.  Have  I,  in  these 
latter  years,  given  form  and  substance  and  a  name  to 
things  as  vague  in  themselves  as  the  urgencies  of  instinct? 
Did  I  really  go  into  those  woods  and  waving  green  places 
as  one  keeps  a  tryst,  expectant  of  a  fellowship  more  free 
and  delicate  and  delightful  than  any  I  knew.  Did  I  know 
in  those  days  of  nymphs  and  dryads  and  fauns  and  all 
those  happy  soulless  beings  with  which  the  desire  of  man's 
heart  has  animated  the  wilderness.  Once  certainly  I 
crawled  slowly  through  the  tall  bracken  and  at  last  lay 
still  for  an  interminable  while,  convinced  that  so  I  should 
see  those  shadows  populous  with  fairies,  with  green  little 
people.  How  patiently  I  lay !  But  the  stems  creaked  and 
stirred,  and  my  heart  would  keep  on  beating  like  a  drum 
in  my  throat. 

It  is  incredible  that  once  a  furry  whispering  half -human 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

creature  with  bright  brown  eyes  came  and  for  a  time 
played  with  me  near  where  the  tall  ferns  foam  in  a  broad 
torrent  from  between  the  big  chestnuts  down  to  the  upper 
mere.  That  must  have  been  real  dreaming,  and  yet  now, 
with  all  my  sanities  and  scepticisms,  I  could  half  believe 
it  real. 

§2 

You  become  reserved.  Perhaps  not  exceptionally 
so,  but  as  all  children  become  reserved.  Already  you 
understand  that  your  heart  is  very  preciously  your  own. 
You  keep  it  from  me  and  everyone,  so  much  so,  so 
justifiably  so,  that  when  by  virtue  of  our  kindred  and 
all  that  we  have  in  common  I  get  sudden  glimpses  right 
into  your  depths,  there  mixes  with  the  swift  spasm  of 
love  I  feel,  a  dread — lest  you  should  catch  me,  as  it  were, 
spying  into  you  and  that  one  of  us,  I  know  not  which, 
should  feel  ashamed. 

Every  child  passes  into  this  secret  stage;  it  closes  in 
from  its  first  frankness;  it  carries  off  the  growing  jewel  of 
its  consciousness  to  hide  from  all  mankind.  ...  I  think 
I  can  see  why  this  should  be  so,  but  I  cannot  tell  why  in  so 
many  cases  no  jewel  is  given  back  again  at  last,  alight, 
ripened,  wonderful,  glowing  with  the  deep  fires  of  ex- 
perience. I  think  that  is  what  ought  to  happen ;  it  is  what 
does  happen  now  with  true  poets  and  true  artists.  Some- 
day I  think  it  will  be  the  life  of  all  normal  human  souls. 
But  usually  it  does  not  seem  to  happen  at  all.  Children 
pass  out  of  a  stage — open,  beautiful,  exquisitely  simple — 
into  silences  and  discretions  beneath  an  imposed  and 
artificial  life.  And  they  are  lost.  Out  of  the  finished, 

18 


BOYHOOD 

careful,  watchful,  restrained  and  limited  man  or  woman, 
no  child  emerges  again.  .  .  . 

I  remember  very  distinctly  how  I  myself  came  by  im- 
perceptible increments  of  reservation  to  withdraw  those 
early  delicacies  of  judgments,  those  original  and  personal 
standards  and  appreciations,  from  sight  and  expression. 
I  can  recall  specific  moments  when  I  perceive  now  that 
my  little  childish  figure  stood,  as  it  were,  obstinately  and 
with  a  sense  of  novelty  in  a  doorway  denying  the  self 
within. 

It  was  partly,  I  think,  a  simple  instinct  that  drew  that 
curtain  of  silences  and  concealments,  it  was  much  more  a 
realization  that  I  had  no  power  of  lucidity  to  save  the 
words  and  deeds  I  sought  to  make  expressive  from  com- 
plete misunderstanding.  But  most  of  all  it  was  the  per- 
ception that  I  was  under  training  and  compulsion  for  ends 
that  were  all  askew  and  irrelevant  to  the  trend  of  my  imag- 
inations, the  quality  of  my  dreams.  There  was  around 
me  something  unfriendly  to  this  inner  world — something 
very  ready  to  pass  from  unfriendliness  to  acute  hostility; 
and  if,  indeed,  I  succeeded  in  giving  anything  of  my  inner 
self  to  others,  it  was  only,  as  people  put  it,  to  give  myself 
away. 

My  nurses,  my  governess,  my  tutor,  my  father,  the 
servants  about  me,  seemed  all  bent  upon  imposing  an 
artificial  personality  upon  me.  Only  in  a  very  limited 
sense  did  they  want  me.  What  they  wanted  was  some- 
thing that  could  be  made  out  of  me  by  extensive  sup- 
pressions and  additions.  They  ignored  the  fact  that  I 
had  been  born  with  a  shape  of  my  own;  they  were  re- 
solved I  should  be  pressed  into  a  mould  and  cast. 

It  was  not  that  they  wanted  outer  conformity  to  cer- 

19 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

tain  needs  and  standards — that,  I  think,  would  be  a 
reasonable  thing  enough  to  demand — but  they  wanted 
me  to  subdue  my  most  private  thoughts  to  their  ideals, 
My  nurses  and  my  governesses  would  rate  me  for  my 
very  feelings,  would  clamor  for  gratitude  and  reproach 
me  bitterly  for  betraying  that  I  did  not  at  some  par- 
ticular moment — love. 

*  (Only  yesterday  I  heard  Mademoiselle  Potin  doing 
that  very  same  thing  to  you.  "It  is  that  you  do  not 
care,  Master  Steve.  It  is  that  you  do  not  care.  You 
do  not  want  to  care.") 

They  went  too  far  in  that  invasion  of  my  personal 
life,  but  I  perceive  quite  clearly  the  present  need  for 
most  of  the  process  of  moulding  and  subjugation  that 
children  must  undergo.  Human  society  is  a  new  thing 
upon  the  earth,  an  invention  of  the  last  ten  thousand 
years.  Man  is  a  creature  as  yet  not  freely  and  instinc- 
tively gregarious;  in  his  more  primordial  state  he  must 
have  been  an  animal  of  very  small  groups  and  limited 
associations,  an  animal  rather  self-centred  and  fierce, 
and  he  is  still  but  imperfectly  adapted  either  morally 
or  physically  to  the  wider  social  life  his  crowding  inter- 
actions force  upon  him.  He  still  learns  speech  and  com- 
putation and  civility  and  all  the  devices  of  this  artificially 
extended  and  continually  broadening  tribal  life  with  an 
extreme  reluctance.  He  has  to  be  shaped  in  the  interests 
of  the  species,  I  admit,  to  the  newer  conditions;  the  grow- 
ing social  order  must  be  protected  from  the  keen  edge  of 
his  still  savage  individuality,  and  he  must  be  trained  in  his 
own  interests  to  save  himself  from  the  destruction  of  im- 
possible revolts.  But  how  clumsily  is  the  thing  done! 
How  we  are  caught  and  jammed  and  pressed  and  crippled 

20 


BOYHOOD 

into  citizenship !  How  excessive  and  crushing  is  the  sup- 
pression, and  how  inadequate ! 

Every  child  feels  that,  even  if  every  child  does  not 
clearly  know  it.  Every  child  presently  begins  to  hide 
itself  from  the  confused  tyrannies  of  the  social  process, 
from  the  searching  inspections  and  injunctions  and  in- 
terferences of  parent  and  priest  and  teacher. 

"I  have  got  to  be  so,"  we  all  say  deep  down  in  our- 
selves and  more  or  less  distinctly  according  to  the  lucidi- 
ties of  our  minds;  "but  in  my  heart  I  am  this." 

And  in  the  outcome  we  all  try  to  seem  at  least  to  be 
so,  while  an  ineffectual  rebel  struggles  passionately,  like 
a  beast  caught  in  a  trap,  for  ends  altogether  more  deep 
and  dangerous,  for  the  rose  and  the  star  and  the  wild- 
fire,— for  beauty  and  beautiful  things.  These,  we  all 
know  in  our  darkly  vital  recesses,  are  the  real  needs  of 
life,  the  obediences  imposed  upon  us  by  our  crude  necessi- 
ties and  jostling  proximities,  mere  incidentals  on  our  way 
to  those  profounder  purposes.  .  .  . 

And  when  I  write  thus  of  our  selves  I  mean  our  bodies 
quite  as  much  as  our  imaginations ;  the  two  sides  of  us  are 
covered  up  alike  and  put  alike  into  disguises  and  unnatural 
shapes,  we  are  taught  and  forced  to  hide  them  for  the  same 
reasons,  from  a  fear  of  ourselves  and  a  fear  of  the  people 
about  us.  The  sense  of  beauty,  the  sense  of  one's  body, 
the  freedom  of  thought  and  of  desire  and  the  wonder  of 
life,  are  all  interwoven  strands.  I  remember  that  in  the 
Park  of  Burnmore  one  great  craving  I  had  was  to  take  off 
my  clothes  there  altogether,  and  bathe  in  a  clear  place 
among  loosestrife  and  meadowsweet,  and  afterwards  lie 
wet  and  naked  upon  the  soft  green  turf  with  the  sun 
shining  upon  me.  But  I  thought  also  that  that  was  a  very 

21 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

wicked  and  shameful  craving  to  have,  and  I  never  dared 
give  way  to  it. 

§3 

As  I  think  of  myself  and  all  these  glowing  secrecies 
and  hidden  fancies  within,  walking  along  beside  old 
Siddons,  and  half  listening  to  his  instructive  discourse, 
I  see  myself  as  though  I  was  an  image  of  all  humanity 
under  tuition  for  the  social  life. 

I  write  "old  Siddons,"  for  so  he  seemed  to  me  then. 
In  truth  he  was  scarcely  a  dozen  years  older  than  I,  and 
the  other  day  when  I  exchanged  salutations  with  his 
gaitered  presence  in  the  Haymarket,  on  his  way  I  suppose 
to  the  Athenaeum,  it  struck  me  that  he  it  is  who  is  now  the 
younger  man.  But  at  Burnmore  he  was  eighteen  inches 
or  more  above  my  head  and  all  the  way  of  school  and  uni- 
versity beyond  me;  full  of  the  world  they  had  fitted  him 
for  and  eager  to  impart  its  doctrines.  He  went  along  in 
his  tweeds  that  were  studiously  untidy,  a  Norfolk  jacket 
of  one  clerically-greyish  stuff  and  trousers  of  another 
somewhat  lighter  pattern,  in  thick  boots,  the  collar  of  his 
calling,  and  a  broad-minded  hat,  bearing  his  face  heaven- 
ward as  he  talked,  and  not  so  much  aware  of  me  as  ap- 
preciating the  things  he  was  saying.  And  sometimes  he 
was  manifestly  talking  to  himself  and  airing  his  outlook. 
He  carried  a  walking-stick,  a  manly,  homely,  knobby, 
donnish  walking-stick.  , 

He  forced  the  pace  a  little,  for  his  legs  were  long  and  he 
had  acquired  the  habit  of  strenuous  pedestrianism  at 
Oxford  with  all  the  other  things;  he  obliged  me  to  go  at  a 
kind  of  skipping  trot,  and  he 'preferred  the  high  roads 

22 


BOYHOOD 

towards  Wickenham  for  our  walks,  because  they  were 
flatter  and  there  was  little  traffic  upon  them  in  those 
days  before  the  motor  car,  and  we  could  keep  abreast  and 
go  on  talking  uninterruptedly.  That  is  to  say,  he  could. 

What  talk  it  was! 

Of  all  the  virtues  that  the  young  should  have.  He 
spoke  of  courage  and  how  splendid  it  was  to  accustom 
oneself  not  even  to  feel  fear;  of  truth,  and  difficult  cases 
when  one  might  conceivably  injure  others  by  telling  the 
truth  and  so  perhaps,  perhaps  qualify  the  rigor  of  one's 
integrity,  but  how  one  should  never  hesitate  to  injure 
one's  own  self  in  that  matter.  Then  in  another  phase 
he  talked  of  belief — and  the  disagreeableness  of  dis- 
senters. But  here,  I  remember,  there  was  a  discussion. 
I  have  forgotten  how  I  put  the  thing,  but  in  some  boyish 
phrasing  or  other  I  must  have  thrown  out  the  idea  that 
thought  is  free  and  beliefs  uncontrollable.  What  of 
conformity,  if  the  truth  was  that  you  doubted?  "Not 
if  you  make  an  effort,"  I  remember  him  saying,  "not  if 
you  make  an  effort.  I  have  had  my  struggles.  But  if 
you  say  firmly  to  yourself,  the  Church  teaches  this.  If 
you  dismiss  mere  carping  and  say  that." 

"But  suppose  you  can't,"  I  must  have  urged. 

"You  can  if  you  will,"  he  said  with  a  note  near  en- 
thusiasm. "I  have  been  through  all  that.  I  did  it. 
I  dismissed  doubts.  I  wouldn't  listen.  I  felt,  This 
won't  do.  All  this  leads  nowhere." 

And  he  it  was  told  me  the  classic  story  of  that  pre- 
sumptuous schoolboy  who  went  to  his  Head  Master  and 
declared  himself  an  atheist.  There  were  no  dialectics 
but  a  prompt  horse-whipping.  "In  after  life,"  said 
Mr.  Siddons,  with  unctuous  gratification,  "he  came  to 

23 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

recognize  that  thrashing  as  the  very  best  thing  that 
had  ever  happened  to  him.  .The  kindest  thing." 

"Yes,"  urged  the  obstinate  rebel  within  me,  "but 
— the  Truth,  that  fearless  insistence  on  the  Truth!" 

I  could,  however,  find  nothing  effective  to  say  aloud, 
and  Siddons  prevailed  over  me.  That  story  made  my 
blood  boil,  it  filled  me  with  an  anticipatory  hatred  of 
and  hostility  to  Head  Masters,  and  at  the  same  time 
there  was  something  in  it,  brutally  truer  to  the  condi- 
tions of  human  association  than  any  argument. 

I  do  not  remember  the  various  steps  by  which  I  came 
to  be  discussing  doubts  so  early  in  my  life.  I  could  not 
have  been  much  more  than  thirteen  when  that  con- 
versation occurred.  I  am  I  think  perhaps  exceptionally 
unconscious  about  myself.  I  find  I  can  recall  the  sayings 
and  even  the  gestures  of  other  people  far  more  distinctly 
than  the  things  I  said  and  did  myself.  Even  my  dreams 
and  imaginings  are  more  active  than  my  positive  thoughts 
and  proceedings.  But  I  was  no  doubt  very  much  stimulat- 
ed by  the  literature  lying  about  my  home  and  the  gleans 
and  echoes  of  controversies  that  played  like  summer 
lightning  round  and  about  the  horizons  of  my  world. 
Over  my  head  and  after  I  had  gone  to  bed,  my  father  and 
Siddons  were  talking,  my  cousin  was  listening  with 
strained  apprehensions,  there  was  a  new  spirit  in  my 
father's  sermons;  it  was  the  storm  of  Huxley-Darwin 
controversies  that  had  at  last  reached  Burnmore.  I  was  an 
intelligent  little  listener,  an  eager  reader  of  anything  that 
came  to  hand,  Mr.  Siddons  had  a  disposition  to  fight  his 
battles  over  again  in  his  monologues  to  me ;  and  after  all  at 
thirteen  one  isn't  a  baby.  The  small  boy  of  the  lower  classes 
used  in  those  days  to  start  life  for  himself  long  before  then. 

24 


BOYHOOD 

How  dramatic  a  phase  it  was  in  the  history  of  the 
human  mind  when  science_suddenlv  came  into  the  vicar- 
ages,  into  all  the  studies  and  quiet  places  that  had  been 
the  fastnesses  of  conviction  and  our  ideals,  and  denied, 
with  all  the  power  of  evidence  it  had  been  accumulating 
for  so  long,  and  so  obscurely  and  inaggressively,  with 
fossils  and  strata,  with  embryology  and  comparative 
anatomy,  the  doctrine  of  the  historical  Fall  and  all  the 
current  scheme  of  orthodoxy  that  was  based  on  that! 
What  a  quickening  shock  it  must  have  been  in  countless 
thousands  of  educated  lives!  And  my  father  after  a 
toughly  honest  resistance  was  won  over  to  Darwinism, 
the  idea  of  Evolution  got  hold  of  him,  the  idea  that  life 
itself  was  intolerant  of  vain  repetitions;  and  he  had  had 
to  "consider  his  position"  in  the  church.  To  him  as  to 
innumerable  other  honest,  middle-aged  and  comfortable 
men,  Darwinism  came  as  a  dreadful  invitation  to  go  out 
into  the  wilderness.  Over  my  head  and  just  out  of  range 
of  my  ears  he  was  debating  that  issue  with  Siddons  as  a 
foil  and  my  cousin  as  a  horrified  antagonist.  Slowly  he 
was  developing  his  conception  of  compromise.  And  mean- 
while he  wasn't  going  out  into  the  wilderness  at  all,  but 
punctually  to  and  fro,  along  the  edge  of  the  lawn  by  the 
bed  of  hollyhocks  and  through  the  little  green  door  in  the 
garden  wall,  and  Across  the  corner  of  the  churchyard  to 
the  vestry  and  the  perennial  services  and  sacraments  of 
the  church. 

But  he  never  talked  to  me  privately  of  religion.  He 
left  that  for  my  cousin  and  Mr.  Siddons  to  do  or  not  to 
do  as  they  felt  disposed,  and  in  those  silences  of  his  I 
may  have  found  another  confirmation  of  my  growing 
feeling  that  religion  was  from  one  point  of  view  a  thing 

25 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

somehow  remote  and  unreal,  claiming  unjustifiable  in- 
terventions in  the  detailed  conduct  of  my  life,  and  from 
another  a  peculiar  concern  of  my  father's  and  Mr.  Siddons', 
to  which  they  went — through  the  vestry,  changing  into 
strange  garments  on  the  way. 


§4 

I  do  not  want  to  leave  the  impression  which  my  last 
section  may  have  conveyed  that  at  the  age  of  thirteen 
or  thereabouts  I  walked  about  with  Mr.  Siddons  dis- 
cussing doubt  in  a  candid  and  intelligent  manner  and 
maintaining  theological  positions.  That  particular  con- 
versation, you  must  imagine  with  Mr.  Siddons  somewhat 
monologuing,  addressing  himself  not  only  to  my  present 
self,  but  with  an  unaccustomed  valiance  to  my  absent 
father.  What  I  may  have  said  or  not  said,  whether  I  did 
indeed  dispute  or  merely  and  by  a  kind  of  accident  im- 
plied objections,  I  have  altogether  forgotten  long  ago. 

A  boy  far  more  than  a  man  is  menially  a  discontinuous 
being.  The  drifting  chaos  of  his  mind  makes  its  exper- 
imental beginnings  at  a  hundred  different  points  and  in  a 
hundred  different  spirits  and  directions;  here  he  flashes 
into  a  concrete  realization,  here  into  a  conviction  un- 
consciously incompatible;  here  is  something  originally 
conceived,  here  something  uncritically  accepted.  I  know 
that  I  criticized  Mr.  Siddons  quite  acutely,  and  disbe- 
lieved in  him.  I  know  also  that  I  accepted  all  sorts  of 
suggestions  from  him  quite  unhesitatingly  and  that  I  did 
my  utmost  to  satisfy  his  standards  and  realize  his  ideals 

of  me. 

26 


BOYHOOD 

Like  an  outer  casing  to  that  primordial  creature  of 
senses  and  dreams  which  came  to  the  surface  in  the 
solitudes .  of  the  Park  was  my  Siddonsesque  self,  a  high- 
minded  and  clean  and  brave  English  boy,  conscientiously 
loyal  to  queen  and  country,  athletic  and  a  good  sports- 
man and  acutely  alive  to  good  and  bad  "form."  Mr. 
Siddons  made  me  aware  of  my  clothed  self  as  a  visible 
object,  I  surveyed  my  garmented  being  in  mirrors  and 
was  trained  to  feel  the  "awfulness"  of  various  other 
small  boys  who  appeared  transitorily  in  the  smaller  Park 
when  Lady  Ladislaw  extended  her  wide  hospitality  to 
certain  benevolent  London  associations.  Their  ill-fitting 
clothing,  their  undisciplined  outcries,  their  slouching, 
their  bad  throwing  and  defective  aspirates  wire  made  mat- 
ters for  detestation  in  my  plastic  mind.  Those  things, 
I  was  assured,  placed  them  outside  the  pale  of  any  common 
humanity. 

"Very  unfortunate  and  all  that,"  said  Mr.  Siddons, 
"and  uncommonly  good  of  Lady  Ladislaw  to  have  them 
down.  But  dirty  little  cads,  Stephen,  dirty  little  cads; 
so  don't  go  near  'em  if  you  can  help  it." 

They  played  an  indecent  sort  of  cricket  with  coats 
instead  of  a  wicket! 

Mr.  Siddons  was  very  grave  about  games  and  the 
strict  ritual  and  proper  apparatus  for  games.  He  be- 
lieved that  Waterloo  was  won  by  the  indirect  influence 
of  public  school  cricket — disregarding  many  other  con- 
tributory factors.  We  did  not  play  very  much,  but  we 
"practised"  sedulously  at  a  net  in  the  paddock  with  the 
gardener  and  the  doctor's  almost  grown-up  sons.  I 
thought  missing  a  possible  catch  was  an  impropriety. 
I  studiously  maintained  the  correct  attitude,  alert  and 

27 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

elastic,  while  I  was  fielding.  Moreover  I  had  a  shameful 
secret,  that  I  did  not  really  know  where  a  ball  ought  tc 
pitch.  I  wasn't  clear  about  it  and  I  did  not  dare  to  ask 
Also  until  I  was  nearly  thirteen  I  couldn't  bowl  overarm, 
Such  is  the  enduring  force  of  early  suggestion,  my  deal 
son,  that  I  feel  a  faint  twinge  of  shame  as  I  set  this  down 
for  your  humiliated  eyes.  But  so  it  was.  May  you  be 
more  precocious! 

Then  I  was  induced  to  believe  that  I  really  liked  hunt- 
ing and  killing  things.  In  the  depths  of  my  being  I  was 
a  gentle  and  primitive  savage  towards  animals;  I  believed 
they  were  as  subtle  and  wise  as  myself  and  full  of  a  magic 
of  their  own,  but  Mr.  Siddons  nevertheless  got  me  out 
into  the  south  Warren,  where  I  had  often  watched  the 
rabbits  setting  their  silly  cock-eared  sentinels  and  lollop- 
ing out  to  feed  about  sundown,  and  beguiled  me  into 
shooting  a  furry  little  fellow-creature — I  can  still  see  its 
eyelid  quiver  as  it  died — and  carrying  it  home  in  triumph. 
On  another  occasion  I  remember  I  was  worked  up  into  a 
ferocious  excitement  about  the  rats  in  the  old  barn. 
We  went  ratting,  just  as  though  I  was  Tom  Brown  or 
Harry  East  or  any  other  of  the  beastly  little  models  of 
cant  and  cruelty  we  English  boys  were  trained  to  imitate. 
It  was  great  sport.  It  was  a  tremendous  spree.  The 
distracted  movements,  the  scampering  and  pawing  of  the 
little  pink  forefeet  of  one  squawking  little  fugitive,  that  I 
hit  with  a  stick  and  then  beat  to  a  shapeless  bag  of  fur, 
haunted  my  dreams  for  years,  and  then  I  saw  the  bowels 
of  another  still  living  victim  that  had  been  torn  open  by 
one  of  the  terriers,  and  abruptly  I  fled  out  into  the  yard 
and  was  violently  sick;  the  best  of  the  fun  was  over  so  far 
as  I  was  concerned. 

28 


BOYHOOD 

My  cousin  saved  me  from  the  uttermost  shame  of  my 
failure  by  saying  that  I  had  been  excited  too  soon  after 
my  dinner.  .  .  . 

And  also  I  collected  stamps  and  birds'  eggs. 

Mr.  Siddons  hypnotized  me  into  believing  that  I  really 
wanted  these  things;  he  gave  me  an  egg-cabinet  for  a  birth- 
day present  and  told  me  exemplary  stories  of  the  wonderful 
collections  other  boys  had  made.  My  own  natural  dis- 
position to  watch  nests  and  establish  heaven  knows  what 
friendly  intimacy  with  the  birds — perhaps  I  dreamt  their 
mother  might  let  me  help  to  feed  the  young  ones — gave 
place  to  a  feverish  artful  hunting,  a  clutch,  and  then, 
detestable  process,  the  blowing  of  the  egg.  Of  course  we 
were  very  humane;  we  never  took  the  nest,  but  just 
frightened  off  the  sitting  bird  and  grabbed  a  warm  egg  or 
so.  And  the  poor  perforated,  rather  damaged  little  egg- 
shells accumulated  in  the  drawers,  against  the  wished-for 
but  never  actually  realized  day  of  glory  when  we  should 
meet  another  collector  who  wouldn't  have — something 
that  we  had.  So  far  as  it  was  for  anything  and  not  mere 
imbecile  imitativeness,  it  was  for  that. 

And  writing  thus  of  eggs  reminds  me  that  I.  got  into  a 
row  with  Mr.  Siddons  for  cruelty. 

I  discovered  there  was  the  nest  of  a  little  tit  in  a  hole 
between  two  stones  in  the  rock  bank  that  bordered  the 
lawn.  I  found  it  out  when  I  was  sitting  on  the  garden 
seat  near  by,  learning  Latin  irregular  verbs.  I  saw  the 
minute  preposterous  round  birds  going  and  coming,  and 
I  found  something  so  absurdly  amiable  and  confiding 
about  them — they  sat  balancing  and  oscillating  on  a 
standard  rose  and  cheeped  at  me  to  go  and  then  dived 
nestward  and  gave  away  their  secret  out  of  sheer  impa- 
3  29 


TIJE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

tience — that  I  could  not  bring  myself  to  explore  further,  I 
and  kept  the  matter  altogether  secret  from  the  enthusiasm 
of  Mr.  Siddons.  And  in  a  few  days  there  were  no  more 
eggs  and  I  could  hear  the  hungry  little  nestlings  making 
the  minutest  of  fairy  hullabaloos,  the  very  finest  spun  silk 
of  sound;  a  tremendous  traffic  in  victual  began  and  I  was 
the  trusted  friend  of  the  family. 

Then  one  morning  I  was  filled  with  amazement  and 
anguish.  There  was  a  rock  torn  down  and  lying  in  the 
path ;  a  paw  had  gone  up  to  that  little  warm  place.  Across 
the  gravel,  shreds  of  the  nest  and  a  wisp  or  so  of  down  were 
scattered.  I  could  imagine  the  brief  horrors  of  that  night 
attack.  I  started  off,  picking  up  stones  as  I  went,  to 
murder  that  sandy  devil,  the  stable  cat.  I  got  her  once 
— alas!  that  I  am  still  glad  to  think  of  it — and  just  missed 
her  as  she  flashed,  a  ginger  streak,  through  the  gate  into 
the  paddock. 

"Now  Steve!  Now!"  came  Mr.  Siddons'  voice  behind 
me.  .  .  . 

How  can  one  explain  things  of  that  sort  to  a  man  like 
Siddons?  I  took  my  lecture  on  the  Utter  Caddishness  of 
Wanton  Cruelty  in  a  black  rebellious  silence.  The  affair 
and  my  own  emotions  were  not  only  far  beyond  my  powers 
of  explanation,  but  far  beyond  my  power  of  understanding. 
Just  then  my  soul  was  in  shapeless  and  aimless  revolt 
against  something  greater  and  higher  and  deeper  and 
darker  than  Siddons,  and  his  reproaches  were  no  more 
than  the  chattering  of  a  squirrel  while  a  storm  uproots 
great  trees.  I  wanted  to  kill  the  cat.  I  wanted  to  kill 
whatever  had  made  that  cat. 


BOYHOOD 

§5 

Mr.  Siddons  it  was  who  first  planted  the  conception 
of  Life  as  a  Career  in  my  mind. 

In  those  talks  that  did  so  much  towards  shaping  me 
into  the  likeness  of  a  modest,  reserved,  sporting,  seemly, 
clean  and  brave,  patriotic  and  decently  slangy  young 
Englishman,  he  was  constantly  reverting  to  that  view 
of  existence.  He  spoke  of  failures  and  successes,  talked 
of  statesmen  and  administrators,  peerages  and  West- 
minster Abbey.  "Nelson/1  he  said,  "was  once  a  clergy- 
man's son  like  you." 

"England  has  been  made  by  the  sons  of  the  clergy." 

He  talked  of  the  things  that  led  to  failure  and  the 
things  that  had  made  men  prominent  and  famous. 

"Discursiveness  ruins  a  man,"  I  remember  him  saying. 
"Choose  your  goal  and  press  to  it." 

"Never  do  anything  needlessly  odd.  It's  a  sort  of 
impertinence  to  all  the  endless  leaders  of  the  past  who 
created  our  traditions.  Do  not  commit  yourself  hastily 
to  opinions,  but  once  you  have  done  so,  stick  to  them. 
The  world  would  far  rather  have  a  firm  man  wrong,  than 
a  weak  man  hesitatingly  right.  Stick  to  them." 

"One  has  to  remember,"  I  recall  him  meditating,  far 
over  my  head  with  his  face  upturned,  "that  Institutions 
are  more  important  than  Views.  Very  often  one  adopts 
a  View  only  to  express  one's  belief  in  an  Institution.  .  .  . 
Men  can  do  with  almost  all  sorts  of  Views,  but  only  with 
certain  Institutions.  All  this  Doubt  doesn't  touch  a 
truth  like  that.  One  does  not  refuse  to  live  in  a  house 
because  of  the  old  symbols  one  finds  upon  the  door.  .  .  . 
If  they  are  old  symbols.  .  .  ." 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

Out  of  such  private  contemplations  he  would  descend 
suddenly  upon  me. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  your  life,  Steve?" 
he  would  ask. 

"There  is  no  happiness  in  life  without  some  form  of 
service.  Where  do  you  mean  to  serve?  With  your  bent 
for  science  and  natural  history,  it  wouldn't  be  difficult 
for  you  to  get  into  the  I.C.S.  I  doubt  if  you'd  do  any- 
thing at  the  law;  it's  a  rough  game,  Steve,  though  the 
prizes  are  big.  Big  prizes  the  lawyers  get.  ,  I've  known 
a  man  in  the  Privy  Council  under  forty — and  that  without 
anything  much  in  the  way  of  a  family.  .  .  .  But  always 
one  must  concentrate.  The  one  thing  England  will  not 
stand  is  a  loafer,  a  wool-gatherer,  a  man  who  goes  about 
musing  and  half -awake.  It's  our  energy.  We're  western. 
It's  that  has  made  us  all  we  are." 

I  knew  whither  that  pointed.  Never  so  far  as  I  can 
remember  did  Mr.  Siddons  criticize  either  myself  or  my 
father  directly,  but  I  understood  with  the  utmost  clear- 
ness that  he  found  my  father  indolent  and  hesitating, 
and  myself  more  than  a  little  bit  of  a  mollycoddle,  and 
in  urgent  need  of  pulling  together. 

§  6 

Harbury  went  on  with  that  process  of  suppressing, 
encrusting,  hardening,  and  bracing-up  which  Mr.  Siddons 
had  begun.  For  a  time  I  pulled  myself  together  very 
thoroughly.  I  am  not  ungrateful  nor  unfaithful  to 
Harbury;  in  your  turn  you  will  go  there,  you  will  have 
to  live  your  life  in  this  British  world  of  ours  and  you  must 
learn  its  language  and  manners,  acquire  its  reserves  and 

32 


BOYHOOD 

,  develop  the  approved  toughness  and  patterning  of  cuticle. 
Afterwards  if  you  please  you  may  quarrel  with  it.  But 
don't  when  the  time  comes  quarrel  with  the  present  condi- 
tions of  human  association  and  think  it  is  only  with  Har- 
bury  you  quarrel.  What  man  has  become  and  may  be- 
come beneath  the  masks  and  impositions  of  civilization, 
in  his  intimate  texture  and  in  the  depths  of  his  being,  I 
begin  now  in  my  middle  age  to  appreciate.  No  longer 
is  he  an  instinctive  savage  but  a  creature  of  almost  incred- 
ible variability  and  wonderful  new  possibilities.  Marvels 
undreamt  of,  power  still  inconceivable,  an  empire  beyond 
the  uttermost  stars;  such  is  man's  inheritance.  But  for 
the  present,  until  we  get  a  mastery  of  those  vague  and 
mighty  intimations  at  once  so  perplexing  and  so  reassur- 
ing, if  we  are  to  live  at  all  in  the  multitudinousness  of 
human  society  we  must  submit  to  some  scheme  of  clumsy 
compromises  and  conventions  or  other, — and  for  us 
Strattons  the  Harbury  system  is  the  most  convenient. 
You  will  have  to  go  to  the  old  school. 

I  went  to  Rendle's.  I  just  missed  getting  into  college; 
I  was  two  places  below  the  lowest  successful  boy.  I  was 
Maxton's  fag  to  begin  with,  and  my  chief  chum  was 
Raymond,  who  is  your  friend  also,  and  who  comes  so 
often  to  this  house.  I  preferred  water  to  land,  boats  to 
cricket,  because  of  that  difficulty  about  pitch  I  have 
already  mentioned.  But  I  was  no  great  sportsman. 
Raymond  and  I  shared  a  boat,  and  spent  most  of  the  time 
we  gave  to  it  under  the  big  trees  near  Dartpool  Lock, 
reading  or  talking.  We  would  pull  up  to  Sandy  Hall 
perhaps  once  a  week.  I  never  rowed  in  any  of  the  eights, 
though  I  was  urged  to  do  so.  I  swam  fairly  well,  and  got 
my  colors  on  the  strength  of  my  diving. 

33 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

On  the  whole  I  found  Harbury  a  satisfactory  and 
amusing  place,  I  was  neither  bullied  nor  do  I  think  I 
greatly  bullied,  and  of  all  that  furtive  and  puerile  lascivi- 
ousness  of  which  one  hears  so  many  hints  nowadays — 
excitable  people  talk  of  it  as  though  it  was  the  most 
monstrous  and  singular  of  vices  instead  of  a  slightly 
debasing  but  almost  unavoidable  and  very  obvious  result 
of  heaping  boys  together  under  the  inefficient  control  of  a 
timid  pretentious  class  of  men — of  such  uncleanness  as  I 
say,  scarcely  more  than  a  glimpse  and  a  whisper  and  a 
vague  tentative  talk  or  so  reached  me.  Little  more  will 
reach  you,  for  that  kind  of  thing,  like  the  hells  of  Sweden- 
borg,  finds  its  own. 

I  had  already  developed  my  growing  instinct  for  ob- 
servance to  a  very  considerable  extent  under  Siddons,  and 
at  Harbury  I  remember  myself,  and  people  remember 
me,  as  an  almost  stiffly  correct  youth.  I  was  pretty  good 
at  most  of  the  work,  and  exceptionally  so  at  history, 
geology,  and  the  biological  side  of  natural  science.  I  had 
to  restrain  my  interest  in  these  latter  subjects  lest  I 
should  appear  to  be  a  "swat,"  and  a  modern-side  swat 
at  that.  I  was  early  in  the  sixth,  and  rather  a  favorite 
with  old  Latimer.  He  incited  me  to  exercise  what  he 
called  a  wholesome  influence  on  the  younger  boys,  and  I 
succeeded  in  doing  this  fairly  well  without  any  gross  in- 
terventions. I  implied  rather  than  professed  soundly 
orthodox  views  about  things  in  general,  and  I  was  ex- 
tremely careful  to  tilt  my  straw  hat  forward  over  my 
nose  so  as  just  not  to  expose  the  crown  of  my  head  behind, 
and  to  turn  up  my  trousers  with  exactly  that  width  of 
margin  which  the  judgment  of  my  fellow-creatures  had 
decided  was  correct.  My  socks  were  spirited  without  be- 

34 


BOYHOOD 

ing  vulgar,  and  the  ties  I  wore  were  tied  with  a  studious 
avoidance  of  either  slovenliness  or  priggish  neatness.  I 
wrote  two  articles  in  the  Harburonian,  became  something 
of  a  debater  in  the  Literary  and  Political,  conducted  many 
long  conversations  with  my  senior  contemporaries  upon 
religion,  politics,  sport  and  social  life,  and  concealed  my 
inmost  thoughts  from  every  human  being.  Indeed,  so 
effective  had  been  the  training  of  Harbury  and  Mr. 
Siddons,  that  I  think  at  that  time  I  came  very  near  coiv 
cealing  them  from  myself.  I  could  suppress  wonder,  I 
could  pass  by  beauty  as  if  I  did  not  see  it,  almost  I  think 
I  did  not  see  it  for  a  time,  and  yet  I  remember  it  in  those 
years  too — a  hundred  beautiful  things. 

Harbury  itself  is  a  very  beautiful  place.  The  country 
about  it  has  all  the  charm  of  river  scenery  in  a  settled  and 
ancient  land,  and  the  great  castle  and  piled  town  of 
Wetmore,  cliffs  of  battlemented  grey  wall  rising  above 
a  dense  cluster  of  red  roofs,  form  the  background  to  in- 
numerable gracious  prospects  of  great  stream-fed  trees, 
level  meadows  of  buttercups,  sweeping  curves  of  osier  and 
rush-rimmed  river,  the  playing  fields  and  the  sedgy,  lily- 
spangled  levels  of  Avonlea.  The  college  itself  is  mostly 
late  Tudor  and  Stuart  brickwork,  very  ripe  and  mellow 
now,  but  the  great  grey  chapel  with  its  glorious  east 
window  floats  over  the  whole  like  a  voice  singing  in  the 
evening.  And  the  evening  cloudscapes  of  Harbury  are 
a  perpetual  succession  of  glorious  effects,  now  serene,  now 
mysteriously  threatening  and  profound,  now  towering  to 
incredible  heights,  now  revealing  undreamt-of  distances 
of  luminous  color.  Assuredly  I  must  have  delighted  in 
all  those  aspects,  or  why  should  I  remember  them  so 
well?  But  I  recall,  I  mean,  no  confessed  recognition  of 

35 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

them;  no  deliberate  going-out  of  my  spirit,  open  and 
unashamed,  to  such  things. 

I  suppose  one's  early  adolescence  is  necessarily  the 
period  of  maximum  shyness  in  one's  life.  Even  to 
Raymond  I  attempted  no  extremities  of  confidence. 
Even  to  myself  I  tried  to  be  the  thing  that  was  expected 
of  me.  I  professed  a  modest  desire  for  temperate  and 
tolerable  achievement  in  life,  though  deep  in  my  lost 
depths  I  wanted  passionately  to  excel;  I  worked  hard, 
much  harder  than  I  allowed  to  appear,  and  I  said  I  did 
it  for  the  credit  of  the  school;  I  affected  a  dignified 
loyalty  to  queen  and  country  and  church ;  I  pretended  a 
stoical  disdain  for  appetites  and  delights  and  all  the  arts, 
though  now  and  then  a  chance  fragment  of  poetry  would 
light  me  like  a  fire,  or  a  lovely  picture  stir  unwonted 
urgencies,  though  visions  of  delight  haunted  the  shadows 
of  my  imagination  and  did  not  always  fly  when  I  regarded 
them.  But  on  the  other  hand  I  affected  an  interest  in 
games  that  I  was  far  from  feeling.  Of  some  boys  I  was 
violently  jealous,  and  this  also  I  masked  beneath  a 
generous  appreciation.  Certain  popularities  I  applauded 
while  I  doubted.  Whatever  my  intimate  motives  I 
became  less  and  less  disposed  to  obey  them  until  I  had 
translated  them  into  a  plausible  rendering  of  the  accepted 
code.  If  I  could  not  so  translate  them  I  found  it  wise 
to  control  them.  When  I  wanted  urgently  one  summer 
to  wander  by  night  over  the  hills  towards  Kestering  and 
lie  upon  heather  and  look  up  at  the  stars  and  wonder 
about  them,  I  cast  about  and  at  last  hit  upon  the  well- 
known  and  approved  sport  of  treacling  for  moths,  as  a 
cloak  for  so  strange  an  indulgence. 

I  must  have  known  even  then  what  a  mask  and  front 

36 


BOYHOOD 

I  was,  because  I  knew  quite  well  how  things  were  with 
other  people.  I  listened  politely  and  respected  and 
understood  the  admirable  explanations  of  my  friends. 
When  some  fellow  got  a  scholarship  unexpectedly  and 
declared  it  was  rotten  bad  luck  on  the  other  chap,  seeing 
the  papers  he  had  done,  and  doubted  whether  he  shouldn't 
resign,  I  had  an  intuitive  knowledge  that  he  wouldn't 
resign,  and  I  do  not  remember  any  time  in  my  career  as 
the  respectful  listener  to  Mr.  Siddons*  aspirations  for 
service  and  devotion,  when  I  did  not  perceive  quite  clearly 
his  undeviating  eye  upon  a  bishopric.  He  thought  of 
gaiters  though  he  talked  of  wings. 

How  firmly  the  bonds  of  an  old  relationship  can  hold 
one !  I  remember  when  a  few  years  ago  he  reached  that 
toiled-for  goal,  I  wrote  in  a  tone  of  gratified  surprise 
that  in  this  blatant  age,  such  disinterested  effort  as  his 
should  receive  even  so  belated  a  recognition.  Yet  what 
else  was  there  for  me  to  write?  We  all  have  our  Sid- 
donses,  with  whom  there  are  no  alternatives  but  insin- 
cerity or  a  disproportionate  destructiveness.  I  am  still 
largely  Siddonsized,  little  son,  and  so,  I  fear,  you  will  have 
to  be. 

§7 

The  clue  to  all  the  perplexities  of  law  and  custom  lies 
in  this,  that  human  association  is  an  artificiality.  We 
do  not  run  together  naturally  and  easily  as  grazing  deer 
do  or  feeding  starlings  or  a  shoal  of  fish.  We  are  a  sort 
of  creature  which  is  only  resuming  association  after  a  long 
heredity  of  extreme  separation.  We  are  beings  strongly 
individualized,  we  are  dominated  by  that  passion  which  is 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

no  more  and  no  less  than  individuality  in  action, — : 
jealousy.  Jealousy  is  a  fierce  insistence  on  ourselves,  an 
instinctive  intolerance  of  our  fellow-creatures,  ranging 
between  an  insatiable  aggression  as  its  buoyant  phas£ 
and  a  savage  defensiveness  when  it  is  touched  by  fear. 
In  our  expansive  moments  we  want  to  dominate  and 
control  everyone  and  destroy  every  unlikeness  to  our- 
selves; in  our  recessive  phases  our  homes  are  our  castles 
and  we  want  to  be  let  alone. 

Now  all  law,  all  social  order,  all  custom,  is  a  patch- 
up  and  a  concession  to  this  separating  passion  of  self- 
insistence.  It  is  an  evasion  of  conflict  and  social  death. 
Human  society  is  as  yet  only  a  truce  and  not  an  alliance. 

When  you  understand  that,  you  will  begin  to  under- 
stand a  thousand  perplexing  things  in  legislation  and  social 
life:  You  will  understand  the  necessity  of  all  those 
restrictions  that  are  called  "conventionality/*  and  the 
inevitableness  of  the  general  hostility  to  singularity.  To 
be  exceptional  is  to  assert  a  difference,  to  disregard  the 
banked-up  forces  of  jealousy  and  break  the  essential 
conditions  of  the  social  contract.  It  invites  either  re- 
sentment or  aggression.  So  we  all  wear  much  the  same 
clothing,  affect  modesty,  use  the  same  phrases,  respect 
one  another's  "  rights,"  and  pretend  a  greater  disin- 
terestedness than  we  feel.  .  .  . 

You  have  to  face  this  reality  as  you  must  face  all 
reality.  This  is  the  reality  of  laws  and  government; 
this  is  the  reality  of  customs  and  institutions ;  a  convention 
between  jealousies.  This  is  reality,  just  as  the  cat's  way 
with  the  nestlings  was  reality,  and  the  squealing  rat 
one  smashed  in  a  paroxysm  of  cruelty  and  disgust  in  the 
barn. 

38 


BOYHOOD 

But  it  isn't  the  only  reality.  Equally  real  is  the 
passionate  revolt  of  my  heart  against  cruelty,  and  the 
deep  fluctuating  impulse  not  to  pretend,  to  set  aside  fear 
and  jealousy,  to  come  nakedly  out  of  the  compromises  and 
secretive  methods  of  every-day  living  into  the  light,  into 
a  wide  impersonal  love,  into  a  new  way  of  living  for  man- 
kind. .  .  o 


CHAPTER  THE   THIRD 
INTENTIONS  AND  THE  LADY  MARY  CHRISTIAN 


I  KNOW  that  before  the  end  of  my  Harbury  days  I  was 
1  already  dreaming  of  a  Career,  of  some  great  and  con- 
spicuous usefulness  in  the  world.  That  has  always 
haunted  my  mind  and  haunts  it  now.  I  may  be  cured 
perhaps  of  the  large  and  showy  anticipations  of  youth, 
I  may  have  learnt  to  drop  the  " great  and  conspicuous/' 
but  still  I  find  it  necessary  to  believe  that  I  matter,  that 
I  play  a  part  no  one  else  can  play  in  a  progress,  in  a  uni- 
versal scheme  moving  towards  triumphant  ends. 

Almost  wholly  I  think  I  was  dreaming  of  public  service 
in  those  days.  The  Harbury  tradition  pointed  stead- 
fastly towards  the  state,  and  all  my  world  was  bare  of 
allurements  to  any  other  type  of  ambition.  Success  in 
art  or  literature  did  not  appeal  to  us,  and  a  Harbury  boy 
would  as  soon  think  of  being  a  great  tinker  as  a  great 
philosopher.  Science  we  called  "  stinks ";  our  three 
science  masters  were  ex  officio  ridiculous  and  the  practical 
laboratory  a  refuge  for  oddities.  But  a  good  half  of  our 
fathers  at  least  were  peers  or  members  of  parliament, 
and  our  sense  of  politics  was  close  and  keen.  History, 
and  particularly  history  as  it  came  up  through  the  c:ryh- 

40 


INTENTIONS 

teenth  century  to  our  own  times,  supplied  us  with  a  gallery 
of  intimate  models,  our  great  uncles  and  grandfathers  and 
ancestors  at  large  figured  abundantly  in  the  story  and 
furnished  the  pattern  to  which  we  cut  our  anticipations 
of  life.  It  was  a  season  of  Imperialism,  the  picturesque 
Imperialism  of  the  earlier  Kipling  phase,  and  we  were  all 
of  us  enthusiasts  for  the  Empire.  It  was  the  empire  of 
the  White  Man's  Burthen  in  those  days;  the  sordid  anti- 
climax of  the  Tariff  Reform  Movement  was  still  some  years 
ahead  of  us.  It  was  easier  for  us  at  Harbury  to  believe 
then  than  it  has  become  since,  in  our  own  racial  and 
national  and  class  supremacy.  We  were  the  Anglo- 
Saxons,  the  elect  of  the  earth,  leading  the  world  in  social 
organization,  in  science  and  economic  method.  In 
India  and  the  east  more  particularly  we  were  the  apostles 
of  even-handed  justice,  relentless  veracity,  personal  clean- 
liness, and  modern  efficiency.  In  a  spirit  of  adventurous 
benevolence  we  were  spreading  those  blessings  over  a 
reluctant  and  occasionally  recalcitrant  world  of  people 
for  the  most  part  " colored.'*  Our  success  in  this  had 
aroused  the  bitter  envy  and  rivalry  of  various  continental 
nations,  and  particularly  of  France,  Russia,  and  Germany. 
But  France  had  been  diverted  to  North  Africa,  Russia 
to  Eastern  Asia,  and  Germany  was  already  the  most 
considered  antagonist  in  our  path  towards  an  empire 
over  the  world. 

This  was  the  spacious  and  by  no  means  ignoble  project 
of  the  later  nineties.  Most  of  us  Harbury  boys,  trained 
as  I  had  been  trained  to  be  uncritical,  saw  the  national 
outlook  in  those  terms.  We  knew  little  or  nothing,  until 
.  the  fierce  wranglings  of  the  Free  Traders  and  Tariff  Re- 
formers a  few  years  later  brought  it  home  to  us,  of  the  com- 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

mercial,  financial  and  squalid  side  of  our  relations  with  the 
vast  congeries  of  exploited  new  territories  and  subor- 
dinated and  subjugated  populations.  We  knew  nothing 
of  the  social  conditions  of  the  mass  of  people  in  our  own 
country.  We  were  blankly  ignorant  of  economics.  We 
knew  nothing  of  that  process  of  expropriation  and  the 
exploitation  of  labor  which  is  giving  the  world  the  Servile 
State.  The  very  phrase  was  twenty  years  ahead  of  us. 
We  believed  that  an  Englishman  was  a  better  thing  in 
every  way  than  any  other  sort  of  man,  that  English 
literature,  science  and  philosophy  were  a  shining  and  un- 
approachable light  to  all  other  peoples,  that  our  soldiers 
were  better  than  all  other  soldiers  and  our  sailors  than  all 
other  sailors.  Such  civilization  and  enterprise  as  existed 
in  Germany  for  instance  we  regarded  as  a  shadow,  an 
envious  shadow,  following  our  own;  it  was  still  generally 
believed  in  those  days  that  German  trade  was  concerned 
entirely  with  the  dishonest  imitation  of  our  unapproach- 
able English  goods.  And  as  for  the  United  States,  well, 
the  United  States  though  blessed  with  a  strain  of  English 
blood,  were  nevertheless  "out  of  it,"  marooned  in  a  con- 
tinent of  their  own  and — we  had  to  admit  it — corrupt. 

Given  such  ignorance,  you  know,  it  wasn't  by  any 
means  ignoble  to  be  patriotic,  to  dream  of  this  propa- 
gandist Empire  of  ours  spreading  its  great  peace  and 
culture,  its  virtue  and  its  amazing  and  unprecedented 
honesty, — its  honesty! — round  the  world. 


When  I  look  and  try  to  recover  those  early  inten- 
tions of  mine  I  am  astonished  at  the  way  in  which  I 

42 


INTENTIONS 

took  them  ready-made  from  the  world  immediately  about 
me.  In  some  way  I  seem  to  have  stopped  looking — if 
ever  I  had  begun  looking — at  the  heights  and  depths 
above  and  below  that  immediate  life.  I  seem  to  have 
regarded  these  profounder  realities  no  more  during  this 
phase  of  concentration  than  a  cow  in  a  field  regards  the 
sky.  My  father's  vestments,  the  Burnmore  altar,  the 
Harbury  pulpit  and  Mr.  Siddons,  stood  between  me  and 
the  idea  of  God,  so  that  it  needed  years  and  much  bitter 
disillusionment  before  I  discovered  my  need  of  it.  And 
I  was  as  wanting  in  subtlety  as  in  depth.  We  did  no  logic 
nor  philosophy  at  Harbury,  and  at  Oxford  it  was  not  so 
much  thought  we  came  to  deal  with  as  a  mistranslation 
and  vulgarization  of  ancient  and  alien  exercises  in  think- 
ing. There  is  no  such  effective  serum  against  philosophy 
as  the  scholarly  decoction  of  a  dead  philosopher.  The 
philosophical  teaching  of  Oxford  at  the  end  of  the  last 
century  was  not  so  much  teaching  as  a  protective  inocu- 
lation. The  stuff  was  administered  with  a  mysterious 
gilding  of  Greek  and  reverence,  old  Hegel's  monstrous 
web  was  the  ultimate  modernity,  and  Plato,  that  intel- 
lectual journalist-artist,  that  bright,  restless  experi- 
mentalist in  ideas,  was  as  it  were  the  God  of  Wisdom, 
only  a  little  less  omniscient  (and  on  the  whole  more  of  a 
scholar  and  a  gentleman)  than  the  God  of  fact.  .  .  . 

So  I  fell  back  upon  the  empire  in  my  first  attempts 
to  unify  my  life.  I  would  serve  the  empire.  That 
should  be  my  total  significance.  There  was  a  Roman 
touch,  I  perceive,  in  this  devotion.  Just  how  or  where 
I  should  serve  the  empire  I  had  not  as  yet  determined. 
At  times  I  thought  of  the  civil  service,  in  my  more  am- 
bitious moments  I  turned  my  thoughts  to  politics.  But 

43 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

it  was  doubtful  whether  my  private  expectations  made  the 
last  a  reasonable  possibility. 
I  would  serve  the  empire. 


And  all  the  while  that  the  first  attempts  to  consoli- 
date, to  gather  one's  life  together  into  a  purpose  and  a 
plan  of  campaign,  are  going  on  upon  the  field  of  the  young 
man's  life,  there  come  and  go  and  come  again  in  the  sky 
above  him  the  threatening  clouds,  the  ethereal  cirrus, 
the  red  dawns  and  glowing  afternoons  of  that  passion  of 
love  which  is  the  source  and  renewal  of  being.  There  are 
times  when  that  solicitude  matters  no  more  than  a  spring- 
time sky  to  a  runner  who  wins  towards  the  post,  there  are 
times  when  its  passionate  urgency  dominates  every  fact 
in  his  world. 

§4 

One  must  have  children  and  love  them  passionately 
before  one  realizes  the  deep  indignity  of  accident  in  life. 
It  is  not  that  I  mind  so  much  when  unexpected  and  dis- 
concerting things  happen  to  you  or  your  sisters,  but  that 
I  mind  before  they  happen.  My  dreams  and  anticipations 
of  your  lives  are  all  marred  by  my  sense  of  the  huge  im- 
portance mere  chance  encounters  and  incalculable  necessi- 
ties will  play  in  them.  And  in  friendship  and  still  more 
here,  in  this  central  business  of  love,  accident  rules  it 
seems  to  me  almost  altogether.  What  personalities  you 
will  encounter  in  life,  and  have  for  a  chief  interest  in  life, 
is  nearly  as  much  a  matter  of  chance  as  the  drift  of  a  grain 

44 


INTENTIONS 

of  pollen  in  the  pine  forest.  And  once  the  light  hazard  has 
blown  it  has  blown,  never  to  drive  again.  In  other 
schoolrooms  and  nurseries,  in  slum  living-rooms  perhaps  or 
workhouse  wards  or  palaces,  round  the  other  side  of  the 
earth,  in  Canada  or  Russia  or  China,  other  little  creatures 
are  trying  their  small  limbs,  clutching  at  things  about  them 
with  infantile  hands,  who  someday  will  come  into  your 
life  with  a  power  and  magic  monstrous  and  irrational  and 
irresistible.  They  will  break  the  limits  of  your  concen- 
trating self,  call  you  out  to  the  service  of  beauty  and  the 
service  of  the  race,  sound  you  to  your  highest  and  your 
lowest,  give  you  your  chance  to  be  godlike  or  filthy, 
divme  or  utterly  ignoble,  react  together  with  you  upon 
the  very  core  and  essence  of  your  being.  These  unknowns 
are  the  substance  of  your  fate.  You  will  in  extreme  in- 
timacy love  them,  hate  them,  serve  them,  struggle  with 
them,  and  in  that  interaction  the  vital  force  in  you  and 
the  substance  of  your  days  will  be  spent. 

And  who  they  may  chance  to  be  and  their  peculiar 
quality  and  effect  is  haphazard,  utterly  beyond  designing. 

Law  and  custom  conspire  with  the  natural  circum- 
stances of  man  to  exaggerate  every  consequence  of  this 
accumulating  accident,  and  make  it  definite  and  fatal.  .  .  . 

I  find  it  quite  impossible  now  to  recall  the  steps  and 
stages  by  which  this  power  of  sex  invaded  my  life.  It 
seems  to  me  now  that  it  began  very  much  as  a  gale  begins, 
in  catspaws  upon  the  water  and  little  rustlings  among  the 
leaves,  and  then  stillness  and  then  a  distant  soughing 
again  and  a  pause,  and  then  a  wider  and  longer  disturb- 
ance and  so  more  and  more,  with  a  gathering  continuity, 
until  at  last  the  stars  were  hidden,  the  heavens  were  hidden; 
all  the  heights  and  depths  of  life  were  obscured  by  stormy 
4  45 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

impulses  and  passionate  desires.  I  suppose  that  quite 
at  the  first  there  were  simple  curiosities;  no  doubt  they 
were  vivid  at  the  time  but  they  have  left  scarcely  a  trace; 
there  were  vague  first  intimations  of  a  peculiar  excite- 
ment. I  do  remember  more  distinctly  phases  when  there 
was  a  going-out  from  myself  towards  these  things,  these 
interests,  and  then  a  reaction  of  shame  and  concealment. 

And  these  memories  were  mixed  up  with  others  not 
sexual  at  all,  and  particularly  with  the  perception  of  beauty 
in  things  inanimate,  with  lights  seen  at  twilight  and  the 
tender  mysteriousness  of  the  dusk  and  the  confused  dis- 
turbing scents  of  flowers  in  the  evening  and  the  enigmatical 
serene  animation  of  stars  in  the  summer  sky.  .  .  . 

I  think  perhaps  that  my  boyhood  was  exceptionally 
free  from  vulgarizing  influences  in  this  direction.  There 
were  few  novels  in  my  father's  house  and  I  neither  saw  nor 
read  any  plays  until  I  was  near  manhood,  so  that  I 
thought  naturally  about  love  and  not  rather  artificially 
round  and  about  love  as  so  many  imaginative  young  people 
are  trained  to  do.  I  fell  in  love  once  or  twice  while  I  was 
still  quite  a  boy.  These  earliest  experiences  rarely  got 
beyond  a  sort  of  dumb  awe,  a  vague,  vast,  ineffectual 
desire  for  self-immolation.  For  a  time  I  remember  I 
worshipped  Lady  Ladislaw  with  all  my  being.  Then  I 
talked  to  a  girl  in  a  train — I  forget  upon  what  journey — 
but  I  remember  very  vividly  her  quick  color  and  a  certain 
roguish  smile.  I  spread  my  adoration  at  her  feet,  fresh 
and  frank.  I  wanted  to  write  to  her.  Indeed  I  wanted 
to  devote  all  my  being  to  her.  I  begged  hard,  but  there 
was  someone  called  Auntie  who  had  to  be  considered,  an 
Atropos  for  that  thread  of  romance. 

Then  there  was  a  photograph  in  my  father's  study  of 

46 


INTENTIONS 

the  Delphic  Sibyl  from  the  Sistine  Chapel,  that  for  a  time 
held  my  heart,  and — Yes,  there  was  a  girl  an  a  tobacco- 
nist's shop  in  the  Harbury  High  Street.  Drawn  by  an 
irresistible  impulse  I  used  to  go  and  buy  cigarettes — and 
sometimes  converse  about  the  weather.  But  afterwards 
in  solitude  I  would  meditate  tremendous  conversations 
and  encounters  with  her.  The  cigarettes  increased  the 
natural  melancholy  of  my  state  and  led  to  a  reproof ,  from 
old  Henson.  Almost  always  I  suppose  there  is  that  girl 
in  the  tobacconist's  shop.  .  .  . 

I  believe  if  I  made  an  effort  I  could  disinter  some  dozens 
of  such  memories,  more  and  more  faded  until  the  marginal 
ones  would  be  featureless  and  all  but  altogether  effaced. 
As  I  look  back  at  it  now  I  am  struck  by  an  absurd  image; 
it  is  as  if  a  fish  nibbled  at  this  bait  and  then  at  that. 

Given  but  the  slightest  aid  from  accidental  circum- 
stances and  any  of  those  slight  attractions  might  have 
become  a  power  to  deflect  all  my  life. 

The  day  of  decision  arrived  when  the  Lady  Mary 
Christian  came  smiling  out  of  the  sunshine  to  me  into 
the  pavilion  at  Burnmore.  With  that  the  phase  of  stir- 
rings and  intimations  was  over  for  ever  in  my  life.  All 
those  other  impressions  went  then  to  the  dusty  lumber 
room  from  which  I  now  so  slightingly  disinter  them. 


We  five  had  all  been  playmates  together.  There 
were  Lord  Maxton,  who  was  killed  at  Paardeberg  while 
I  was  in  Ladysmith,  he  was  my  senior  by  nearly  a  year, 
Philip,  who  is  now  Earl  Ladislaw  and  who  was  about 

47 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

eighteen  months  younger  than  I,  Mary,  my  contem- 
porary within  eight  days,  and  Guy,  whom  we  regarded 
as  a  baby  and  who  was  called,  apparently  on  account 
of  some  early  linguistic  efforts,  "Brugglesmith."  He 
did  his  best  to  avenge  his  juniority  as  time  passed  on 
by  an  enormous  length  of  limb.  I  had  more  imagina- 
tion than  Maxton  and  was  a  good  deal  better  read,  so 
that  Mary  and  I  dominated  most  of  the  games  of  Indians 
and  warfare  and  exploration  in  which  we  passed  our 
long  days  together.  When  the  Christians  were  at  Bum- 
more,  and  they  usually  spent  three  or  four  months  in  the 
year  there,  I  had  a  kind  of  standing  invitation  to  be 
with  them.  Sometimes  there  would  also  be  two  Christian 
cousins  to  swell  our  party,  and  sometimes  there  would 
be  a  raid  of  the  Fawney  children  with  a  detestable  govern- 
ess who  was  perpetually  vociferating  reproaches,  but  these 
latter  were  absent-minded,  lax  young  persons,  and  we 
did  not  greatly  love  them. 

It  is  curious  how  little  I  remember  of  Mary's  child- 
hood. All  that  has  happened  between  us  since  lies  be- 
tween that  and  my  present  self  like  some  luminous 
impenetrable  mist.  I  know  we  liked  each  other,  that 
I  was  taller  than  she  was  and  thought  her  legs  unreason- 
ably thin,  and  that  once  when  I  knelt  by  accident  on  a 
dead  stick  she  had  brought  into  an  Indian  camp  we  had 
made  near  the  end  of  the  west  shrubbery,  she  flew  at  me 
in  a  sudden  fury,  smacked  my  face,  scratched  me  and  had 
to  be  suppressed,  and  was  suppressed  with  extreme 
difficulty  by  the  united  manhood  of  us  three  elder  boys. 
Then  it  was  I  noted  first  the  blazing  blueness  of  her  eyes. 
She  was  light  and  very  plucky,  so  that  none  of  us  cared  to 
climb  against  her,  and  she  was  as  difficult  to  hold  as  an 

48 


INTENTIONS 

eel.  But  all  these  traits  and  characteristics  vanished 
when  she  was  transformed. 

For  what  seems  now  a  long  space  of  time  I  had  not 
seen  her  or  any  of  the  family  except  Philip;  it  was  cer- 
tainly a  year  or  more,  probably  two;  Maxton  was  at  a 
crammer's  and  I  think  the  others  must  have  been  in 
Canada  with  Lord  Ladislaw.  Then  came  some  sort  of 
estrangement  between  him  and  his  wife,  and  she  returned 
with  Mary  and  Guy  to  Burnmore  and  stayed  there  all 
through  the  summer. 

I  was  in  a  state  of  transition  between  the  infinitely 
great  and  the  infinitely  little.  I  had  just  ceased  to  be 
that  noble  and  potent  being,  that  almost  statesmanlike 
personage,  a  sixth  form  boy  at  Harbury,  and  I  was  going 
to  be  an  Oxford  undergraduate.  Philip  and  I  came  down 
together  by  the  same  train  from  Harbury,  I  shared  the 
Burnmore  dog-cart  and  luggage  cart,  and  he  dropped  me  at 
the  rectory.  I  was  a  long-limbed  youngster  of  seventeen, 
as  tall  as  I  am  now,  and  fair,  so  fair  that  I  was  still  boyish- 
faced  while  most  of  my  contemporaries  and  Philip  (who 
favored  his  father)  were  at  least  smudgy  with  moustaches. 
With  the  head-master's  valediction  and  the  grave  elder- 
brotherliness  of  old  Henson,  and  the  shrill  cheers  of  a 
little  crowd  of  juniors  still  echoing  in  my  head,  I  very 
naturally  came  home  in  a  mood  of  exalted  gravity,  and 
I  can  still  remember  pacing  up  and  down  the  oblong  lawn 
behind  the  rockery  and  the  fig-tree  wall  with  my  father, 
talking  of  my  outlook  with  all  the  tremendous  savoir 
faire  that  was  natural  to  my  age,  and  noting  with  a  secret 
gratification  that  our  shoulders  were  now  on  a  level. 
No  doubt  we  were  discussing  Oxford  and  all  that  I  was 
to  do  at  Oxford;  I  don't  remember  a  word  of  our  speech 

49 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

though  I  recall  the  exact  tint  of  its  color  and  the  dis- 
tinctive feeling  of  our  measured  equal  paces  in  the  sun- 
shine. .  .  . 

I  must  have  gone  up  to  Burnmore  House  the  following 
afternoon.  I  went  up  alone  and  I  was  sent  out  through 
the  little  door  at  the  end  of  the  big  gallery  into  the  garden. 
In  those  days  Lady  Ladislaw  had  made  an  Indian  pavilion 
under  the  tall  trees  at  the  east  end  of  the  house,  and  here 
I  found  her  with  her  cousin  Helena  Christian  entertaining 
a  mixture  of  people,  a  carriageful  from  Hampton  End,  the 
two  elder  Fawneys  and  a  man  in  brown  who  had  I  think 
ridden  over  from  Chestoxter  Castle.  Lady  Ladislaw 
welcomed  me  with  ample  graciousness — as  though  I  was 
a  personage.  * '  The  children ' '  she  said  were  still  at  tennis, 
and  as  she  spoke  I  saw  Guy,  grown  nearly  beyond  recogni- 
tion, and  then  a  shining  being  in  white,  very  straight  and 
graceful,  with  a  big  soft  hat  and  overshadowed  eyes 
that  smiled,  come  out  from  the  hurried  endearments  of  the 
sunflakes  under  the  shadows  of  the  great  chestnuts,  into 
the  glow  of  summer  light  before  the  pavilion. 

" Steve  arrived!"  she  cried,  and  waved  a  welcoming 
racquet. 

I  do  not  remember  what  I  said  to  her  or  what  else  she 
said  or  what  anyone  said.  But  I  believe  I  could  paint 
every  detail  of  her  effect.  I  know  that  when  she  came  out 
of  the  brightness  into  the  shadow  of  the  pavilion  it  was  like 
a  regal  condescension,  and  I  know  that  she  was  wonder- 
fully self-possessed  and  helpful  with  her  mother's  hos- 
pitalities, and  that  I,  marvelled  I  had  never  before  per- 
ceived the  subtler  sweetness  in  the  cadence  of  her  voice. 
I  seem  also  to  remember  a  severe  internal  struggle  for  my 
self-possession,  and  that  I  had  to  recall  my  exalted  posi- 


INTENTIONS 

tion  in  the  sixth  form  to  save  myself  from  becoming  tongue- 
tied  and  abashed  and  awkward  and  utterly  shamed. 

You  see  she  had  her  hair  up  and  very  prettily  dressed, 
and  those  aggressive  lean  legs  of  hers  had  vanished,  and 
she  was  sheathed  in  muslin  that  showed  her  the  most 
delicately  slender  and  beautiful  of  young  women.  And 
she  seemed  so  radiantly  sure  of  herself! 

After  our  first  greeting  I  do  not  think  I  spoke  to  her  or 
looked  at  her  again  throughout  the  meal.  I  took  things 
that  she  handed  me  with  an  appearance  of  supreme 
indifference,  was  politely  attentive  to  the  elder  Miss 
Fawney,  and  engaged  with  Lady  Ladislaw  and  the  horsey 
little  man  in  brown  in  a  discussion  of  the  possibility  of 
mechanical  vehicles  upon  the  high  road.  That  was  in  the 
early  nineties.  We  were  all  of  opinion  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  make  a  sufficiently  light  engine  for  the  purpose. 
Afterwards  Mary  confessed  to  me  how  she  had  been 
looking  forward  to  our  meeting,  and  how  snubbed  I  had 
made  her  feel.  .  .  . 

Then  a  little  later  than  this  meeting  in  the  pavilion, 
though  I  am  not  clear  now  whether  it  was  the  same  or 
some  subsequent  afternoon,  we  are  walking  in  the  sunken 
garden,  and  great  clouds  of  purple  clematis  and  some  less 
lavish  heliotrope-colored  creeper,  foam  up  against  the 
ruddy  stone  balustrading.  Just  in  front  of  us  a  fountain 
gushes  out  of  a  grotto  of  artificial  stalagmite  and  bathes 
the  pedestal  of  an  absurd  little  statuette  of  the  God  of 
Love.  We  are  talking  almost  easily.  She  looks  side- 
ways at  my  face,  already  with  the  quiet  controlled  watch- 
fulness of  a  woman  interested  in  a  man,  she  smiles  and  she 
talks  of  flowers  and  sunshine,  the  Canadian  winter — and 
with  an  abrupt  transition,  of  old  times  we've  had  together 


'HE 


PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 


in  the  shrubbery  and  the  wilderness  of  bracken  out  beyond. 
She  seems  tremendously  grown-up  and  womanly  to  me. 
I  am  talking  my  best,  and  glad,  and  in  a  manner  scared  at 
the  thrill  her  newly  discovered  beauty  gives  me,  and 
keeping  up  my  dignity  and  coherence  with  an  effort. 
My  attention  is  constantly  being  distracted  to  note  how 
prettily  she  moves,  to  wonder  why  it  is  I  never  noticed 
the  sweet  fall,  the  faint  delightful  whisper  of  a  lisp  in  her 
voice  before. 

We  agree  about  the  flowers  and  the  sunshine  and  the 
Canadian  winter  —  about  everything.  "I  think  so  often 
of  those  games  we  used  to  invent,"  she  declares.  "So 
do  I,"  I  say,  "so  do  I."  And  then  with  a  sudden  bold- 
ness: "Once  I  broke  a  stick  of  yours,  a  rotten  stick  you 
thought  a  sound  one.  Do  you  remember?" 

Then  we  laugh  together  and  seem  to  approach  across 
a  painful,  unnecessary  distance  that  has  separated  us. 
It  vanishes  for  ever.  "  I  couldn't  now,"  she  says,  "smack 
your  face  like  that,  Stephen." 

That  seems  to  me  a  brilliantly  daring  and  delightful 
thing  for  her  to  say,  and  jolly  of  her  to  use  my  Christian 
name  too!  "I  believe  I  scratched,"  she  adds. 

"You  never  scratched,"  I  assert  with  warm  conviction. 
"Never." 

"I  did,"  she  insists  and  I  deny.     "You  couldn't." 

"We're  growing  up,"  she  cries.  "That's  what  has 
happened  to  us.  We  shall  never  fight  again  with  our 
hands  and  feet,  never — until  death  do  us  part." 

"For  better,  or  worse,"  I  say,  with  a  sense  of  wit  and 
enterprise  beyond  all  human  precedent. 

"For  richer,  or  poorer,"  she  cries,  taking  up  my  chal- 
lenge with  a  lifting  laugh  in  her  voice. 

52 


INTENTIONS 

And  then  to  make  it  all  nothing  again,  she  exclaims  at 
the  white  lilies  that  rise  against  masses  of  sweet  bay  along 
the  further  wall.  .  .  . 

How  plainly  I  can  recall  it  all!  How  plainly  and  how 
brightly!  As  we  came  up  the  broad  steps  at  the  further 
end  towards  the  tennis  lawn,  she  turned  suddenly  upon 
me  and  with  a  novel  assurance  of  command  told  me  to 
stand  still.  "  There"  she  said  with  a  hand  out  and  seemed 
to  survey  me  with  her  chin  up  and  her  white  neck  at  the 
level  of  my  eyes.  "Yes.  A  whole  step,"  she  estimated, 
"and  more,  taller  than  I.  You  will  look  down  on  me, 
Stephen,  now,  for  all  the  rest  of  our  days." 

"I  shall  always  stand,"  I  answered,  "a  step  or  so  below 
you." 

"No,"  she  said,  "come  up  to  the  level.  A  girl  should 
be  smaller  than  a  man.  You  are  a  man,  Stephen — almost. 
.  .  .  You  must  be  near  six  feet.  .  .  .  Here's  Guy  with  the 
box  of  balls." 

She  flitted  about  the  tennis  court  before  me,  playing 
with  Philip  against  Guy  and  myself.  She  punished  some 
opening  condescensions  with  a  wicked  vigor — and  pres- 
ently Guy  and  I  were  straining  every  nerve  to  save  the 
set.  She  had  a  low  close  serve  I  remember  that  seemed 
perfectly  straightforward  and  simple,  and  was  very  dif- 
ficult to  return. 


All  that  golden  summer  on  the  threshold  of  my  manhood 
was  filled  by  Mary.     I  loved  her  with  the  love  of  a  boy 
and  a  man.     Either  I  was  with  Mary  or  I  was  hoping^ 
and  planning  to  be  with  Mary  or  I  was  full  of  some  vivid 

53 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

new  impression  of  her  or  some  enigmatical  speech,  some 
pregnant  nothing,  some  glance  or  gesture  engaged  and 
perplexed  my  mind.  In  those  days  I  slept  the  profound 
sweet  sleep  of  youth,  but  whenever  that  deep  flow  broke 
towards  the  shallows,  as  I  sank  into  it  at  night  and  came 
out  of  it  at  morning,  I  passed  through  dreams  of  Mary  to 
and  from  a  world  of  waking  thought  of  her.  . 

There  must  have  been  days  of  friendly  intercourse  when 
it  seemed  we  talked  nothings  and  wandered  and  mean- 
dered among  subjects,  but  always  we  had  our  eyes  on  one 
another.  And  afterwards  I  would  spend  long  hours  in 
recalling  and  analyzing  those  nothings,  questioning  their 
nothingness,  making  out  of  things  too  submerged  and 
impalpable  for  the  rough  drags  of  recollection,  promises 
and  indications.  I  would  invent  ingenious  things  to  say, 
things  pushing  out  suddenly  from  nothingness  to  extreme 
significance.  I  rehearsed  a  hundred  declarations. 

It  was  easy  for  us  to  be  very  much  together.  We 
were  very  free  that  summer  and  life  was  all  leisure. 
Lady  Ladislaw  was  busied  with  her  own  concerns;  she 
sometimes  went  away  for  two  or  three  days  leaving  no 
one  but  an  attenuated  governess  with  even  the  shadow 
of  a  claim  to  interfere  with  Mary.  Moreover  she  was 
used  to  seeing  me  with  her  children  at  Burnmore;  we 
were  still  in  her  eyes  no  more  than  children.  .  .  .  And 
also  perhaps  she  did  not  greatly  mind  if  indeed  we  did 
a  little  fall  in  love  together.  To  her  that  may  have  seemed 
a  very  natural  and  slight  and  transitory  possibility.  .  .  . 

One  afternoon  of  warm  shadows  in  the  wood  near  the 
red-lacquered  Chinese  bridge,  we  two  were  alone  together 
and  we  fell  silent.  I  was  trembling  and  full  of  a  wild 
courage.  I  can  feel  now  the  exquisite  surmise,  the  doubt 

54 


INTENTIONS 

of  that  moment.  Our  eyes  met.  She  looked  up  at  me 
with  an  unwonted  touch  of  fear  in  her  expression  and  I 
laid  my  hands  on  her.  She  did  not  recoil,  she  stood  mute 
with  her  lips  pressed  together,  looking  at  me  steadfastly. 
I  can  feel  that  moment  now  as  a  tremendous  hesitation, 
blank  and  yet  full  of  light  and  life,  like  a  clear  sky  in  the 
moment  before  dawn.  .  .  . 

She  made  a  little  move  towards  me.     Impulsively,  with 
no  word  said,  we  kissed. 


I  would  like  very  much  to  give  you  a  portrait  of  Mary 
as  she  was  in  those  days.  Every  portrait  I  ever  had 
of  her  I  burnt  in  the  sincerity  of  what  was  to  have  been 
our  final  separation,  and  now  I  have  nothing  of  her  in 
my  possession.  I  suppose  that  in  the  files  of  old  illustrated 
weeklies  somewhere,  a  score  of  portraits  must  be  findable. 
Yet  photographs  have  a  queer  quality  of  falsehood. 
They  have  no  movement  and  always  there  was  a  little 
movement  about  Mary  just  as  there  is  always  a  little 
scent  about  flowers.  She  was  slender  and  graceful,  so 
that  she  seemed  taller  than  she  was,  she  had  beautifully 
shaped  arms  and  a  brightness  in  her  face;  it  seemed  to  me 
always  that  there  was  light  in  her  face,  more  than  the 
light  that  shone  upon  it.  Her  fair,  very  slightly  reddish 
hair — it  was  warm  like  Australian  gold — flowed  with  a 
sort  of  joyous  bravery  back  from  her  low  broad  forehead; 
the  color  under  her  delicate  skin  was  bright  and  quick,  and 
her  mouth  always  smiled  faintly.  There  was  a  peculiar 
charm  for  me  about  her  mouth,  a  whimsicality,  a  sort  of 
humorous  resolve  in  the  way  in  which  the  upper  lip  fell 

55 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

upon  the  lower  and  in  a  faint  obliquity  that  increased  with 
her  quickening  smile.  She  spoke  with  a  very  clear  delicate 
intonation  that  made  one  want  to  hear  her  speak  again; 
she  often  said  faintly  daring  things,  and  when  she  did, 
she  had  that  little  catch  in  the  breath — of  one  who  dares. 
She  did  not  talk  hastily;  often  before  she  spoke  came  a 
brief  grave  pause.  Her  eyes  were  brightly  blue  except 
when  the  spirit  of  mischief  took  her  and  then  they  became 
black,  and  there  was  something  about  the  upper  and 
lower  lids  that  made  them  not  only  the  prettiest  but  the 
sweetest  and  kindliest  eyes  in  the  world.  And  she  moved 
with  a  quiet  rapidity,  without  any  needless  movements, 
to  do  whatever  she  had  a  mind  to  do.  .  .  . 

But  how  impossible  it  is  to  convey  the  personal  charm 
of  a  human  being.  I  catalogue  these  things  and  it  is  as 
if  she  moved  about  silently  behind  my  stumbling  enumera- 
tion and  smiled  at  me  still,  with  her  eyes  a  little  darkened, 
mocking  me.  That  phantom  will  never  be  gone  from  my 
mind.  It  was  all  of  these  things  and  none  of  these  things 
that  made  me  hers,  as  I  have  never  been  any  other 
person's.  .  .  . 

We  grew  up  together.  The  girl  of  nineteen  mingles 
in  my  memory  with  the  woman  of  twenty-five. 

Always  we  were  equals,  or  if  anything  she  was  the 
better  of  us  two.  I  never  made  love  to  her  in  the  com- 
moner sense  of  the  word,  a  sense  in  which  the  woman 
is  conceived  of  as  shy,  unawakened,  younger,  more  plastic, 
and  the  man  as  tempting,  creating  responses,  persuading 
and  compelling.  We  made  love  to  each  other  as  youth 
should,  we  were  friends  lit  by  a  passion.  ...  I  think  that 
is  the  best  love.  If  I  could  wish  your  future  I  would  have 
you  love  someone  neither  older  and  stronger  nor  younger 

56 


INTENTIONS 

and  weaker  than  yourself.  I  would  have  you  have  neither 
a  toy  nor  a  devotion,  for  the  one  makes  the  woman  con- 
temptible and  the  other  the  man.  There  should  be  some- 
thing almost  sisterly  between  you.  Love  neither  a  god- 
dess no1"  a  captive  woman.  But  I  would  wish  you  a  better 
fate  in  your  love  than  chanced  to  me. 

Mary  was  not  only  naturally  far  more  quick-minded, 
more  swiftly  understanding  than  I,  but  more  widely 
educated.  Mine  was  the  stiff  limited  education  of  the 
English  public  school  and  university;  I  could  not  speak 
and  read  and  think  French  and  German  as  she  could 
for  all  that  I  had  a  pedantic  knowledge  of  the  older 
forms  of  those  tongues;  and  the  classics  and  mathe- 
matics upon  which  I  had  spent  the  substance  of  my  years 
were  indeed  of  little  use  to  me,  have  never  been  of  any 
real  use  to  me,  they  were  ladders  too  clumsy  to  carry 
4  .about  and  too  short  to  reach  anything.  My  general  ideas 
came  from  the  newspapers  and  the  reviews.  She  on  the 
other  hand  had  read  much,  had  heard  no  end  of  good  con- 
versation, the  conversation  of  people  who  mattered,  had 
thought  for  herself  and  had  picked  the  brains  of  her 
brothers.  Her  mother  had  let  her  read  whatever  books 
she  liked,  partly  because  she  believed  that  was  the  proper 
thing  to  do,  and  partly  because  it  was  so  much  less 
trouble  to  be  liberal  in  such  things. 

We  had  the  gravest  conversations. 

I  do  not  remember  that  we  talked  much  of  love,  though 
we  were  very  much  in  love.  We  kissed;  sometimes 
greatly  daring  we  walked  hand  in  hand;  once  I  took  her 
in  my  arms  and  carried  her  over  a  swampy  place  beyond 
the  Killing  Wood,  and  held  her  closely  to  me;  that  was  a 
great  event  between  us ;  but  we  were  shy  of  one  another, 

57 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

shy  even  of  very  intimate  words;  and  a  thousand  daring 
and  beautiful  things  I  dreamt  of  saying  to  her  went  unsaid. 
I  do  not  remember  any  endearing  names  from  that  time. 
But  we  jested  and  shared  our  humors,  shaped  our  develop- 
ing ideas  in  quaint  forms  to  amuse  one  another  and  talked 
— as  young  men  talk  together. 

We  talked  of  religion;  I  think  she  was  the  first  person 
to  thaw  the  private  silences  that  had  kept  me  bound  in 
these  matters  even  from  myself  for  years.  I  can  still 
recall  her  face,  a  little  flushed  and  coming  nearer  to  mine 
after  avowals  and  comparisons.  "But  Stephen,"  she 
says;  "if  none  of  these  things  are  really  true,  why  do  they 
keep  on  telling  them  to  us?  What  is  true?  What  are 
we  for?  What  is  Everything  for?" 

I  remember  the  awkwardness  I  felt  at  these  indelicate 
thrusts  into  topics  I  had  come  to  regard  as  forbidden. 

"I  suppose  there's  a  sort  of  truth  in  them,"  I  said,  and 
then  more  Siddonsesquely:  "endless  people  wiser  than 
we  are » 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "But  that  doesn't  matter  to  us. 
Endless  people  wiser  than  we  are  have  said  one  thing,  and 
endless  people  wiser  than  we  are  have  said  exactly  the 
opposite.  It's  we  who  have  to  understand — for  ourselves. 
.  .  .  We  don't  understand,  Stephen." 

I  was  forced  to  a  choice  between  faith  and  denial. 
But  I  parried  with  questions.  "Don't  you,"  I  asked, 
"feel  there  is  a  God?" 

She  hesitated.  "There  is  something — something  very 
beautiful,"  she  said  and  stopped  as  if  her  breath  had  gone. 
"That  is  all  I  know,  Stephen.  .  .  ." 

And  I  remember  too  that  we  talked  endlessly  about 
the  things  I  was  to  do  in  the  world.  I  do  not  remember 

58 


INTENTIONS 

that  we  talked  about  the  things  she  was  to  do,  by  some 
sort  of  instinct  and  some  sort  of  dexterity  she  evaded 
that,  from  the  very  first  she  had  reserves  from  me,  but 
my  career  and  purpose  became  as  it  were  the  form  in 
which  we  discussed  all  the  purposes  of  life.  I  became 
Man  in  her  imagination,  the  protagonist  of  the  world. 
At  first  I  displayed  the  modest  worthy  desire  for  respect- 
able service  that  Harbury  had  taught  me,  but  her  clear, 
sceptical  little  voice  pierced  and  tore  all  those  pretences 
to  shreds.  "Do  some  decent  public  work,"  I  said,  or 
some  such  phrase. 

"But  is  that  All  you  want?"  I  hear  her  asking.  "Is 
that  All  you  want?" 

I  lay  prone  upon  the  turf  and  dug  up  a  root  of  grass  with 
my  penknife.  "Before  I  met  you  it  was,"  I  said. 

"And  now?" 

"I  want  you." 

"I'm  nothing  to  want.  I  want  you  to  want  all  the 
world.  .  .  .  Why  shouldn't  you?" 

I  think  I  must  have  talked  of  the  greatness  of  serving 
the  empire.  "Yes,  but  splendidly,"  she  insisted.  "Not 
doing  little  things  for  other  people — who  aren't  doing 
anything  at  all.  I  want  you  to  conquer  people  and  lead 
people.  .  .  .  When  I  see  you,  Stephen,  sometimes — I 
almost  wish  I  were  a  man.  In  order  to  be  able  to  do  all 
the  things  that  you  are  going  to  do." 

"For  you,"  I  said,  "for  you." 

•I  stretched  out  my  hand  for  hers,  and  my  gesture  went 
disregarded. 

She  sat  rather  crouched  together  with  her  eyes  gazing 
far  away  across  the  great  spaces  of  the  park. 

"That  is  what  women  are  for,"  she  said.     "To  make  I 

59 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

men  see  how  splendid  life  can  be.  To  lift  them  up — 

out  of  a  sort  of  timid  grubbiness "  She  turned  upon 

me  suddenly.  " Stephen,"  she  said,  "promise  me. 
Whatever  you  become,  you  promise  and  swear  here  and. 
now  never  to  be  grey  and  grubby,  never  to  be  humpy  and 
snuffy,  never  to  be  respectable  and  modest  and  dull  and 
a  little  fat,  like — like  everybody.  Ever." 

"I  swear,"  I  said. 

"Byrne." 

"By  you.  No  book  to  kiss!  Please,  give  me  your 
hand." 

§8 

All  through  that  summer  we  saw  much  of  each  other. 
I  was  up  at  the  House  perhaps  every  other  day;  we 
young  people  were  supposed  to  be  all  in  a  company 
together  down  by  the  tennis  lawns,  but  indeed  we  dis- 
persed and  came  and  went  by  a  kind  of  tacit  understand- 
ing, Guy  and  Philip  each  with  one  of  the  Fawney  girls 
and  I  with  Mary.  I  put  all  sorts  of  constructions  upon 
the  freedom  I  was  given  with  her,  but  I  perceive  now  that 
we  still  seemed  scarcely  more  than  children  to  Lady 
Ladislaw,  and  that  the  idea  of  our  marriage  was  as 
inconceivable  to  her  as  if  we  had  been  brother  and  sister. 
Matrimonially  I  was  as  impossible  as  one  of  the  stable 
boys.  All  the  money  I  could  hope  to  earn  for  years  to 
come  would  not  have  sufficed  even  to  buy  Mary  clothes. 
But  as  yet  we  thought  little  of  matters  so  remote,  glad 
in  our  wonderful  new  discovery  of  love,  and  when  at  last 
I  went  off  to  Oxford,  albeit  the  parting  moved  us  to  much 
tenderness  and  vows  and  embraces,  I  had  no  suspicion 

60 


INTENTIONS 

that  never  more  in  all  our  lives  would  Mary  and  I  meet 
freely  and  gladly  without  restriction.  Yet  so  it  was. 
From  that  day  came  restraints  and  difficulties;  the 
shadow  of  f urtiveness  fell  between  us ;  our  correspondence 
had  to  be  concealed. 

I  went  to  Oxford  as  one  goes  into  exile;  she  to  London. 
I  would  post  to  her  so  that  the  letters  reached  Landor 
House  before  lunch  time  when  the  sun  of  Lady  Ladislaw 
came  over  the  horizon,  but  indeed  as  yet  no  one  was 
watching  her  letters.  Afterwards  as  she  moved  about 
she  gave  me  other  instructions,  and  for  the  most  part  I 
wrote  to  her  in  envelopes  addressed  for  her  by  one  of 
the  Fawney  girls,  who  was  under  her  spell  and  made  no 
enquiry  for  what  purpose  these  envelopes  were  needed. 

To  me  of  course  Mary  wrote  without  restraint.  All 
her  letters  to  me  were  destroyed  after  our  crisis,  but  some 
of  mine  to  her  she  kept  for  many  years;  at  last  they 
came  back  to  me  so  that  I  have  them  now.  And  for  aH 
their  occasional  cheapness  and  crudity,  I  do  not  find 
anything  in  them  to  be  ashamed  of.  They  reflect,  they 
are  chiefly  concerned  with  that  search  for  a  career  of  fine 
service  which  was  then  the  chief  preoccupation  of  my 
mind,  the  bias  is  all  to  a  large  imperialism,  but  it  is  mani- 
fest that  already  the  first  ripples  of  a  rising  tide  of  criti- 
cism against  the  imperialist  movement  had  reached  and 
were  exercising  me.  In  one  letter  I  am  explaining  that 
imperialism  is  not  a  mere  aggressiveness,  but  the  estab- 
lishment of  peace  and  order  throughout  half  the  world. 
"  We  may  never  withdraw,"  I  wrote  with  all  the  confidence 
of  a  Foreign  Secretary,  "from  all  these  great  territories 
of  ours,  but  we  shall  stay  only  to  raise  their  peoples 
ultimately  to  an  equal  citizenship  with  ourselves."  And 
5  61 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

then  in  the  same  letter:  "and  if  I  do  not  devote  myself 
to  the  Empire  what  else  is  there  that  gives  anything  like 
the  same  opportunity  of  a  purpose  in  life."  I  find  myself 
in  another  tolerantly  disposed  to  "accept  socialism,"  but 
manifestly  hostile  to  "the  narrow  mental  habits  of  the 
socialists."  The  large  note  of  youth!  And  in  another  I 
am  clearly  very  proud  and  excited  and  a  little  mock- 
modest  over  the  success  of  my  first  two  speeches  in  the 
Union. 

On  the  whole  I  like  the  rather  boyish,  tremendously 
serious  young  man  of  those  letters.  An  egotist,  of  course, 
but  what  youth  was  ever  anything  else?  I  may  write 
that  much  freely  now,  for  by  this  time  he  is  almost  as 
much  outside  my  personality  as  you  or  my  father.  He  is 
the  young  Stratton,  one  of  a  line.  I  like  his  gravity;  if 
youth  is  not  grave  with  all  the  great  spectacle  of  life  open- 
ing at  its  feet,  then  surely  no  age  need  be  grave.  I  love 
and  envy  his  simplicity  and  honesty.  His  sham  modesty 
and  so  forth  are  so  translucent  as  scarcely  to  matter.  It 
is  clear  I  was  opening  my  heart  to  myself  as  I  opened  it  to 
Mary.  I  wasn't  acting  to  her.  I  meant  what  I  said. 
And  as  I  remember  her  answers  she  took  much  the  same 
high  tone  with  me,  though  her  style  of  writing  was  far 
lighter  than  mine,  more  easy  and  witty  and  less  continuous. 
She  flashed  and  flickered.  As  for  confessed  love-making 
there  is  very  little, — I  find  at  the  end  of  one  of  my  notes 
after  the  signature,  "I  love  you,  I  love  you."  And  she 
was  even  more  restrained.  Such  little  phrases  as  "Dear 
Stevenage" — that  was  one  of  her  odd  names  for  me — 
"I  wish  you  were  here,"  or  "Dear,  dear  Stevenage," 
were  epistolary  events,  and  I  would  re-read  the  blessed 
wonderful  outbreak  a  hundred  times.  .  .  . 

62 


INTENTIONS 

Our  separation  lengthened.  There  was  a  queer  de- 
tached unexpected  meeting  in  London  in  December,  for 
some  afternoon  gathering.  I  was  shy  and  the  more  dis- 
concerted because  she  was  in  winter  town  clothes  that 
made  her  seem  strange  and  changed.  Then  came  the 
devastating  intimation  that  all  through  the  next  summer 
the  Ladislaws  were  to  be  in  Scotland. 

I  did  my  boyish  utmost  to  get  to  Scotland.  They  were 
at  Lankart  near  Invermoriston,  and  the  nearest  thing  I 
could  contrive  was  to  join  a  reading  party  in  Skye,  a 
reading  party  of  older  men  who  manifestly  had  no  great 
desire  for  me.  For  more  than  a  year  we  never  met  at 
all,  and  all  sorts  of  new  things  happened  to  us  both.  I 
perceived  they  happened  to  me,  but  I  did  not  think  they 
happened  to  her.  Of  course  we  changed.  Of  course  in 
a  measure  and  relatively  we  forgot.  Of  course  there  were 
weeks  when  we  never  thought  of  each  other  at  all.  Then 
would  come  phases  of  hunger.  I  remember  a  little  note 
of  hers.  "  Oh  Stevenage,"  it  was  scrawled,  "  perhaps  next 
Easter !"  Next  Easter  was  an  aching  desolation.  The 
blinds  of  Burnmore  House  remained  drawn;  the  place  was 
empty  except  for  three  old  servants  on  board-wages. 
The  Christians  went  instead  to  the  Canary  Isles,  following 
some  occult  impulse  of  Lady  Ladislaw's.  Lord  Ladislaw 
spent  the  winter  in  Italy. 

What  an  empty  useless  beauty  the  great  Park  possessed 
during  those  seasons  of  intermission!  There  were  a  score 
of  places  in  it  we  had  made  our  own.  .  .  . 

Her  letters  to  Oxford  would  cease  for  weeks,  and 
suddenly  revive  and  become  frequent.  Now  and  then 
would  come  a  love-letter  that  seemed  to  shine  like  stars 
as  I  read  it;  for  the  most  part  they  were  low-pitched, 

63 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

friendly  or  humorous  letters  in  a  roundish  girlish  writing 
that  was  maturing  into  a  squarely  characteristic  hand. 
My  letters  to  her  too  I  suppose  varied  as  greatly.  We 
began  to  be  used  to  living  so  apart.  There  were  weeks 
of  silence.  .  .  . 

Yet  always  when  I  thought  of  my  life  as  a  whole,  Mary 
ruled  it.  With  her  alone  I  had  talked  of  my  possible 
work  and  purpose;  to  her  alone  had  I  confessed  to  am- 
bitions beyond  such  modest  worthiness  as  a  public  school 
drills  us  to  affect.  .  .  . 

Then  the  whole  sky  of  my  life  lit  up  again  with  a  strange 
light  of  excitement  and  hope.  I  had  a  note,  glad  and 
serenely  friendly,  to  say  they  were  to  spend  all  the  summer 
at  Burnmore. 

I  remember  how  I  handled  and  scrutinized  that  letter, 
seeking  for  some  intimation  that  our  former  intimacy 
was  still  alive.  We  were  to  meet.  How  should  we  meet  ? 
How  would  she  look  at  me  ?  What  would  she  think  of  me  ? 


§9 

Of  course  it  was  all  different.  Our  first  encounter  in 
this  new  phase  had  a  quality  of  extreme  disillusionment. 
The  warm  living  creature,  who  would  whisper,  who  would 
kiss  with  wonderful  lips,  who  would  say  strange  daring 
things,  who  had  soft  hair  one  might  touch  with  a  thrilling 
and  worshipful  hand,  who  changed  one  at  a  word  or  a  look 
,  into  a  God  of  pride,  became  as  if  she  had  been  no  more 
than  a  dream.  A  self-possessed  young  aristocrat  in  white 
and  brown  glanced  at  me  from  amidst  a  group  of  brilliant 
people  on  the  terrace,  nodded  as  it  seemed  quite  carelessly 

64 


INTENTIONS 

in  acknowledgment  of  my  salutation,  and  resumed  her 
confident  conversation  with  a  tall  stooping  man,  no  less  a 
person  than  Evesham,  the  Prime  Minister.  He  was 
lunching  at  Burnmore  on  his  way  across  country  to  the 
Rileys.  I  heard  that  dear  laugh  of  hers,  as  ready  and 
easy  as  when  she  laughed  with  me.  I  had  not  heard  it 
for  nearly  three  years — nor  any  sound  that  had  its  sweet- 
ness. "But  Mr.  Evesham,"  she  was  saying,  "nowadays 
we  don't  believe  that  sort  of  thing " 

"There  are  a  lot  of  things  still  for  you  to  believe,"  says 
Mr.  Evesham  beaming.  "  A  lot  of  things !  One's  capacity 
increases.  It  grows  with  exercise.  Justin  will  bear  me 
out." 

Beyond  her  stood  an  undersized,  brown-clad  middle- 
aged  man  with  a  big  head,  a  dark  face  and  expressive 
brown  eyes  fixed  now  in  unrestrained  admiration  on 
Mary's  laughing  face.  This  then  was  Justin,  the  in- 
credibly rich  and  powerful,  whose  comprehensive  opera- 
tions could  make  and  break  a  thousand  fortunes  in  a  day. 
He  answered  Evesham  carelessly,  with  his  gaze  still  on 
Mary,  and  in  a  voice  too  low  for  my  straining  ears. 
There  was  some  woman  in  the  group  also,  but  she  has  left 
nothing  upon  my  mind  whatever  except  an  effect  of  black 
and  a  very  decorative  green  sunshade.  She  greeted 
Justin's  remark,  I  remember,  with  the  little  yelp  of 
laughter  that  characterized  that  set.  I  think  too  there 
was  someone  else  in  the  group;  but  I  cannot  clearly  recall 
who.  .  .  . 

Presently  as  I  and  Philip  made  unreal  conversation 
together  I  saw  Mary  disengage  herself  and  come  towards 
us.  It  was  as  if  a  princess  came  towards  a  beggar. 
Absurd  are  the  changes  of  phase  between  women  and 

65 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS    [ 

men.  A  year  or  so  ago  and  all  of  us  had  been  but  "the 
children"  together;  now  here  were  I  and  Philip  mere 
youths  still,  nobodies,  echoes  and  aspirations,  crude 
promises  at  the  best,  and  here  was  Mary  in  full  flower, 
as  glorious  and  central  as  the  Hampton  Court  azaleas  in 
spring. 

"And  this  is  Stephen,"  she  said,  aglow  with  happy 
confidence. 

I  made  no  memorable  reply,  and  there  was  a  little 
pause  thick  with  mute  questionings. 

"After  lunch,"  she  said  with  her  eye  on  mine,  "I  am 
going  to  measure  against  you  on  the  steps.  I'd  hoped 
— when  you  weren't  looking — I  might  creep  up " 

"I've  taken  no  advantage,"  I  said. 

"You've  kept  your  lead." 

Justin  had  followed  her  towards  us,  and  now  held 
out  a  hand  to  Philip.  "Well,  Philip  my  boy,"  he  said, 
and  defined  our  places.  Philip  made  some  introductory 
gesture  with  a  word  or  so  towards  me.  Justin  glanced 
at  me  as  one  might  glance  at  someone's  new  dog,  gave 
an  expressionless  nod  to  my  stiff  movement  of  recogni- 
tion, and  addressed  himself  at  once  to  Mary. 

"Lady  Mary,"  he  said, "I've  wanted  to  tell  you " 

I  caught  her  quick  eye  for  a  moment  and  knew  she 
had  more  to  say  to  me,  but  neither  she  nor  I  had  the  skill 
and  alacrity  to  get  that  said. 

"I  wanted  to  tell  you,"  said  Justin,  "I've  found  a 
little  Japanese  who's  done  exactly  what  you  wanted  with 
that  group  of  dwarf  maples." 

She  clearly  didn't  understand. 

"But  what  did  I  want,  Mr.  Justin?"  she  asked. 

" Don't  say  that  you  forget?"  cried  Justin.  " Oh  don't 
66 


INTENTIONS 

tell  me  you  forget !  You  wanted  a  little  exact  copy  of  a 

Japanese  house I've  had  it  done.  Beneath  the 

trees.  .  .  ." 

"And  so  you're  back  in  Burnmore,  Mr.  Stratton,"  said 
Lady  Ladislaw  intervening  between  me  and  their  duo- 
logue. And  I  never  knew  how  pleased  Mary  was  with 
this  faithful  realization  of  her  passing  and  forgotten  fancy. 
My  hostess  greeted  me  warmly  and  pressed  my  hand, 
smiled  mechanically  and  looked  over  my  shoulder  all  the 
while  to  Mr.  Evesham  and  her  company  generally,  and 
then  came  the  deep  uproar  of  a  gong  from  the  house  and 
we  were  all  moving  in  groups  and  couples  luncheonward. 

Justin  walked  with  Lady  Mary,  and  she  was  I  saw 
an  inch  taller  than  his  squat  solidity.  A  tall  lady  in 
rose-pink  had  taken  possession  of  Guy,  Evesham  and 
Lady  Ladislaw  made  the  two  centres  of  a  straggling  group 
who  were  bandying  recondite  political  allusions.  Then 
came  one  or  two  couples  and  trios  with  nothing  very 
much  to  say  and  active  ears.  Philip  and  I  brought  up 
the  rear  silently  and  in  all  humility.  Even  young  Guy 
had  gone  over  our  heads.  I  was  too  full  of  a  stupendous 
realization  for  any  words.  Of  course,  during  those  years, 
she  had  been  doing — no  end  of  things !  And  while  I  had 
been  just  drudging  with  lectures  and  books  and  theorizing 
about  the  Empire  and  what  I  could  do  with  it,  and  taking 
exercise,  she  had  learnt,  it  seemed — the  World. 

§  10 

Lunch  was  in  the  great  dining-room.  There  was  a  big 
table  and  two  smaller  ones;  we  sat  down  anyhow,  but 
the  first  comers  had  grouped  themselves  about  Lady 

67 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

Ladislaw  and  Evesham  and  Justin  and  Mary  in  a  central 
orb,  and  I  had  to  drift  perforce  to  one  of  the  satellites. 
I  secured  a  seat  whence  I  could  get  a  glimpse  ever  and 
again  over  Justin's  assiduous  shoulders  of  a  delicate 
profile,  and  I  found  myself  immediately  engaged  in  an- 
swering the  innumerable  impossible  questions  of  Lady 
Viping,  the  widow  of  terrible  old  Sir  Joshua,  that  devastat- 
ing divorce  court  judge  who  didn't  believe  in  divorces. 
His  domestic  confidences  had  I  think  corrupted  her  mind 
altogether.  She  cared  for  nothing  but  evidence.  She 
was  a  rustling,  incessant,  sandy,  peering  woman  with  a 
lorgnette  and  rapid,  confidential  lisping  undertones,  and 
she  wanted  to  know  who  everybody  was  and  how  they 
were  related.  This  kept  us  turning  towards  the  other 
tables — and  when  my  information  failed  she  would  call 
upon  Sir  Godfrey  Klavier,  who  was  explaining,  rather 
testily  on  account  of  her  interruptions,  to  Philip  Christian 
and  a  little  lady  in  black  and  the  elder  Fawney  girl  just 
why  he  didn't  believe  Lady  Ladislaw's  new  golf  course 
would  succeed.  There  were  two  or  three  other  casual 
people  at  our  table;  one  of  the  Roden  girls,  a  young 
guardsman  and,  I  think,  some  other  man  whom  I  don't 
clearly  remember. 

4 'And  so  that's  the  great  Mr.  Justin/'  rustled  Lady 
Viping  and  stared  across  me. 

(I  saw  Evesham  leaning  rather  over  the  table  to  point 
some  remark  at  Mary,  and  noted  her  lips  part  to  reply.) 

"What  is  the  word?"  insisted  Lady  Viping  like  a  fly 
in  my  ear. 

I  turned  on  her  guiltily. 

"Whether  it's  brachy,"  said  Lady  Viping,  "or  whether 
it's  dolly—/  can  never  remember?" 

08 


INTENTIONS 

I  guessed  she  was  talking  of  Justin's  head.  "Oh! — 
brachy cephalic,"  I  said. 

I  had  lost  Mary's  answer. 

"They  say  he's  a  woman  hater,"  said  Lady  Viping. 
"It  hardly  looks  like  it  now,  does  it?" 

"Who?"  I  asked.     "What?— oh!— Justin." 

"The  great  financial  cannibal.  Suppose  she  turned 
him  into  a  philanthropist!  Stranger  things  have  hap- 
pened. Look! — now.  The  man's  face  is  positively 
tender." 

I  hated  looking,  and  I  could  not  help  but  look.  It 
was  as  if  this  detestable  old  woman  was  dragging  me 
down  and  down,  down  far  below  all  dignity  to  her  own 
level  of  a  peeping  observer.  Justin  was  saying  some- 
thing to  Mary  in  an  undertone,  something  that  made  her 
glance  up  swiftly  and  at  me  before  she  answered,  and 
there  I  was  with  my  head  side  by  side  with  those  quivering 
dyed  curls,  cfchat  flighty  black  bonnet,  that  remorseless 
observant  lorgnette.  I  could  have  sworn  aloud  at  the 
hopeless  indignity  of  my  pose. 

I  saw  Mary  color  qt  'ckly  before  I  looked  away. 

"Charming,  isn't  she?"  said  Lady  Viping,  and  I  dis- 
covered those  infernal  glasses  were  for  a  moment  honor- 
ing me.  They  shut  with  a  click.  "Ham,"  said  Lady 
Viping.  "I  told  him  no  ham — and  now  I  remember — 
I  like  ham.  Or  rather  I  like  spinach.  I  forgot  the 
spinach.  One  has  the  ham  for  the  spinach, — don't  you 
think?  Yes, — tell  him.  She's  a  perfect  Dresden  orna- 
ment, Mr.  Stratton.  She's  adorable  .  .  .  (lorgnette  and 
search  for  fresh  topics).  Who  is  the  dark  lady  with  the 
slight  moustache — sitting  there  next  to  Guy?  Sir  God- 
frey, who  is  the  dark  lady?  No,  I  don't  mean  Mary 

69 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

Fitton.  Over  there!  Mrs. Roperstone.  Ooh  The  Mrs. 
Roperstone.  (Renewed  lorgnette  and  click.)  Yes — ham. 
With  spinach.  A  lot  of  spinach.  There's  Mr.  Evesham 
laughing  again.  He's  greatly  amused.  Unusual  for  him 
to  laugh  twice.  At  least,  aloud.  (Rustle  and  adjust- 
ment of  lorgnette.)  Mr.  Stratton,  don't  you  think? — 
exactly  like  a  little  shepherdess.  Only  I  can't  say  I  think 
Mr.  Justin  is  like  a  shepherd.  On  the  whole,  more  like 
a  large  cloisonne  jar.  Now  Guy  would  do.  As  a  pair 
they're  beautiful.  Pity  they're  brother  and  sister.  Curi- 
ous how  that  boy  manages  to  be  big  and  yet  delicate. 
H'm.  Mixed  mantel  ornaments.  Sir  Godfrey,  how  old 
is  Mrs.  Roperstone?  .  .  .  You  never  know  on  principle. 
I  think  I  shall  make  Mr.  Stratton  guess.  What  do  you 
think,  Mr.  Stratton?  .  .  .  You  never  guess  on  principle! 
Well,  we're  all  very  high  principled.  (Fresh  exploratory 
movements  of  the  lorgnette.)  Mr.  Stratton,  tell  me;  is 
that  little  peaked  man  near  Lady  Ladislaw  Mr.  Roper- 
stone? I  thought  as  much!" 

All  this  chatter  is  mixed  up  in  my  mind  with  an  unusual 
sense  of  hovering  attentive  menservants,  who  seemed 
all  of  them  to  my  heated  imagination  to  be  watching  me 
(and  particularly  one  clean-shaven,  reddish-haired,  full- 
faced  young  man)  lest  I  looked  too  much  at  the  Lady 
Mary  Christian.  Of  course  they  were  merely  watching 
our  plates  and  glasses,  but  my  nerves  and  temper  were 
now  in  such  a  state  that  if  my  man  went  off  to  the  buffet 
to  get  Sir  Godfrey  the  pickled  walnuts,  I  fancied  he  went 
to  report  the  progress  of  my  infatuation,  and  if  a  strange 
face  appeared  with  the  cider  cup,  that  this  was  a  new 
observer  come  to  mark  the  revelation  of  my  behavior. 
My  food  embarrassed  me.  I  found  hidden  meanings  in 

70 


INTENTIONS 

the  talk  of  the  Roden  girl  and  her  guardsman,  and  an 
ironical  discovery  in  Sir  Godfrey's  eye.  .  .  . 

I  felt  indignant  with  Mary.  I  felt  she  disowned  me 
and  deserted  me  and  repudiated  me,  that  she  ought  in 
some  manner  to  have  recognized  me.  I  gave  her  no 
credit  for  her  speech  to  me  before  the  lunch,  or  her  promise 
to  measure  against  me  again.  I  blinded  myself  to  all 
her  frank  friendliness.  I  felt  she  ought  not  to  notice 
Justin,  ought  not  to  answer  him.  .  .  . 

Clearly  she  liked  those  men  to  flatter  her,  she  liked 
it.  ... 

I  remember  too,  so  that  I  must  have  noted  it  and  felt 
it  then  as  a  thing  perceived  for  the  first  time,  the  large 
dignity  of  the  room,  the  tall  windows  and  splendid  rich 
curtains,  the  darkened  Hoppners  upon  the  walls.  I 
noted  too  the  quality  and  abundance  of  the  table  things, 
and  there  were  grapes  and  peaches,  strawberries,  cherries 
and  green  almonds,  piled  lavishly  above  the  waiting 
dessert  plates  with  the  golden  knives  and  forks,  upon 
a  table  in  the  sunshine  of  the  great  bay.  The  very 
sunshine  filtered  through  the  tall  narrow  panes  from  the 
great  chestnut  trees  without,  seemed  of  a  different  quality 
from  the  common  light  of  day.  .  .  . 

I  felt  like  a  poor  relation.  I  sympathized  with  Anar- 
chists. We  had  come  out  of  the  Park  now  finally,  both 
Mary  and  I — into  this.  .  .  . 

"  Mr.  Stratton  I  am  sure  agrees  with  me." 

For  a  time  I  had  been  marooned  conversationally, 
and  Lady  Viping  had  engaged  Sir  Godfrey.  Evidently 
he  was  refractory  and  she  was  back  at  me. 

"Look  at  it  now  in  profile,"  she  said,  and  directed  me 
once  more  to  that  unendurable  grouping.  Justin  again ! 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

"It's  a  heavy  face,"  I  said. 

"It's  a  powerful  face.  I  wouldn't  care  anyhow  to 
be  up  against  it — as  people  say."  And  the  lorgnette 
shut  with  a  click.  "What  is  this?  Peaches!— Yes, 
and  give  me  some  cream."  .  .  . 

I  hovered  long  for  that  measuring  I  had  been  prom- 
ised on  the  >steps,  but  either  Mary  had  :  forgotten  or 
she  deemed  it  wiser  to  forget. 


I  took  my  leave  of  Lady  Ladislaw  when  the  departure 
of  Evesham  broke  the  party  into  dispersing  fragments. 
I  started  down  the  drive  towards  the  rectory  and  then 
vaulted  the  railings  by  the  paddock  and  struck  across 
beyond  the  mere.  I  could  not  go  home  with  the  im- 
mense burthen  of  thought  and  new  ideas  and  emotions 
that  had  come  upon  me.  I  felt  confused  and  shattered  to 
incoherence  by  the  new  quality  of  Mary's  atmosphere. 
I  turned  my  steps  towards  the  wilder,  lonelier  part  of  the 
park  beyond  the  Killing  Wood,  and  lay  down  in  a  wide 
space  of  grass  between  two  divergent  thickets  of  bracken, 
and  remained  there  for  a  very  long  time. 

There  it  was  in  the  park  that  for  the  first  time  I  pitted 
myself  against  life  upon  a  definite  issue,  and  prepared 
my  first  experience  of  defeat.  "I  will  have  her,"  I  said, 
hammering  at  the  turf  with  my  fist.  "I  will.  I  do  not 
care  if  I  give  all  my  life  .  .  ." 

Then  I  lay  still  and  bit  the  sweetness  out  of  joints  of 
grass,  and  presently  thought  and  planned. 


CHAPTER  THE  FOURTH 
THE  MARRIAGE  OP  THE  LADY  MARY  CHRISTIAN 

§i 

FOR  three  or  four  days  I  could  get  no  word  with  Mary. 
I  could  not  now  come  and  go  as  I  had  been  able  to  do 
in  the  days  when  we  were  still  "the  children."  I  could 
not  work,  I  could  not  rest,  I  prowled  as  near  as  I  could 
to  Burnmore  House  hoping  for  some  glimpse  of  her, 
waiting  for  the  moment  when  I  could  decently  present 
myself  again  at  the  house. 

When  at  last  I  called,  Justin  had  gone  and  things 
had  some  flavor  of  the  ancient  time.  Lady  Ladislaw 
received  me  with  an  airy  intimacy,  all  the  careful  re- 
sponsibility of  her  luncheon  party  manner  thrown  aside. 
"And  how  goes  Cambridge?"  she  sang,  sailing  through 
the  great  saloon  towards  me,  and  I  thought  that  for  the 
occasion  Cambridge  instead  of  Oxford  would  serve  suf- 
ficiently well.  "You'll  find  them  all  at  tennis,"  said  Lady 
Ladislaw,  and  waved  me  on  to  the  gardens.  There  I 
found  all  four  of  them  and  had  to  wait  until  their  set  was 
finished. 

"Mary,"  I  said  at  the  first  chance,  "are  we  never  to 
talk  again?" 

"It's  all  different,"  she  said. 

73 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

"I  am  dying  to  talk  to  you — as  we  used  to  talk." 

"And  I — Stevenage.     But You  see?" 

"Next  time  I  come,"  I  said,  "I  shall  bring  you  a  letter. 
There  is  so  much " 

"No,"  she  said.  "Can't  you  get  up  in  the  morning? 
Very  early — five  or  six.  No  one  is  up  until  ever  so  late." 

"I'd  stay  up  all  night." 

"Serve!"  said  Maxton,  who  was  playing  the  two  of 
us  and  had  stopped  I  think  to  tighten  a  shoe. 

Things  conspired  against  any  more  intimacy  for  a 
time.  But  we  got  our  moment  on  the  way  to  tea.  She 
glanced  back  at  Philip,  who  was  loosening  the  net,  and 
then  forward  to  estimate  the  distance  of  Maxton  and 
Guy.  "They're  all  three  going,"  she  said,  "after  Tues- 
day. Then — before  six." 

"Wednesday?" 

"Yes." 

"Suppose  after  all,"  she  threw  out,  "I  can't  come." 

"Fortunes  of  war." 

"If  I  can't  come  one  morning  I  may  come  another," 
she  spoke  hastily,  and  I  perceived  that  Guy  and  Maxton 
had  turned  and  were  waiting  for  us. 

"You  know  the  old  Ice  House?" 

"Towards  the  gardens?" 

"Yes.  On  the  further  side.  Don't  come  by  the  road, 
come  across  by  the  end  of  the  mere.  Lie  in  the  bracken 
until  you  see  me  coming.  .  .  .  I've  not  played  tennis  a 
dozen  times  this  year.  Not  half  a  dozen." 

This  last  was  for  the  boys. 

"You've  played  twenty  times  at  least  since  you've 
been  here,"  said  Guy,  with  the  simple  bluntness  of  a 
brother.  "I'm  certain." 

74 


MARRIAGE   OF   LADY   MARY 


To  this  day  a  dewy  morning  in  late  August  brings 
back  the  thought  of  Mary  and  those  stolen  meetings. 
I  have  the  minutest  recollection  of  the  misty  bloom 
upon  the  turf,  and  the  ragged,  filmy  carpet  of  gossamer 
on  either  hand,  of  the  warm  wetness  of  every  little  blade 
and  blossom  and  of  the  little  scraps  and  seeds  of  grass 
upon  my  soaking  and  discolored  boots.  Our  footsteps 
were  dark  green  upon  the  dew-grey  grass.  And  I  feel 
the  same  hungry  freshness  again  at  the  thought  of  those 
stolen  meetings.  Presently  came  the  sunrise,  blinding, 
warming,  dew-dispelling  arrows  of  gold  smiting  through 
the  tree  stems,  a  flood  of  light  foaming  over  the  bracken 
and  gilding  the  under  sides  of  the  branches.  Everything 
is  different  and  distinctive  in  those  opening  hours;  every- 
thing has  a  different  value  from  what  it  has  by  day. 
All  the  little  things  upon  the  ground,  fallen  branches, 
tussocks,  wood-piles,  have  a  peculiar  intensity  and  impor- 
tance, seem  magnified,  because  of  the  length  of  their  shad- 
ows in  the  slanting  rays,  and  all  the  great  trees  seem  lifted 
above  the  light  and  merged  with  the  sky.  And  at  last, 
a  cool  grey  outline  against  the  blaze  and  with  a  glancing 
iridescent  halo  about  her,  comes  Mary,  flitting,  adven- 
turous, friendly,  wonderful. 

"Oh  Stevenage!"  she  cries,  "to  see  you  again !" 

We  each  hold  out  both  our  hands  and  clasp  and  hesitate 
and  rather  shyly  kiss. 

"Come!"  she  says,  "we  can  talk  for  an  hour.  It's 
still  not  six.  And  there  is  a  fallen  branch  where  we  can 

75 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

sit  and  put  our  feet  out  of  the  wet.  Oh!  it's  so  good  to 
be  out  of  things  again — clean  out  of  things — with  you. 
Look!  there  is  a  stag  watching  us." 

"You're  glad  to  be  with  me?"  I  ask,  jealous  of  the  very 
sunrise. 

"I  am  always  glad,"  she  says,  "to  be  with  you.  Why 
don't  we  always  get  up  at  dawn,  Stevenage,  every  day 
of  our  lives?" 

We  go  rustling  through  the  grass  to  the  prostrate  timber 
she  has  chosen.  (I  can  remember  even  the  thin  bracelet 
on  the  wrist  of  the  hand  that  lifted  her  skirt.)  I  help 
her  to  clamber  into  a  comfortable  fork  from  which  her 
feet  can  swing.  .  .  . 

Such  fragments  as  this  are  as  bright,  as  undimmed,  as 
if  we  had  met  this  morning.  But  then  comes  our  con- 
versation, and  that  I  find  vague  and  irregularly  obliter- 
ated. But  I  think  I  must  have  urged  her  to  say  she 
loved  me,  and  beat  about  the  bush  of  that  declaration, 
too  fearful  to  put  my  heart's  wish  to  the  issue,  that  she 
would  promise  to  wait  three  years  for  me — until  I  could 
prove  it  was  not  madness  for  her  to  marry  me.  "I  have 
been  thinking  of  it  all  night  and  every  night  since  I  have 
been  here,"  I  said.  "Somehow  I  will  do  something. 
In  some  way — I  will  get  hold  of  things.  Believe  me! — 
with  all  my  strength." 

I  was  standing  between  the  forking  boughs,  and  she 
was  looking  down  upon  me. 

"Stephen  dear,"  she  said,  "dear,  dear  Boy;  I  have  never 
wanted  to  kiss  you  so  much  in  all  my  life.  Dear,  come 
close  to  me." 

She  bent  her  fresh  young  face  down  to  mine,  her  fingers 
were  in  my  hair. 

76 


MARRIAGE   OF   LADY   MARY 

"My  Knight,'*  she  whispered  close  to  me.  "My  beau- 
tiful young  Knight." 

I  whispered  back  and  touched  her  dew  fresh  lips.  .  .  . 

"And  tell  me  what  you  would  do  to  conquer  the  world 
for  me?"  she  asked. 

I  cannot  remember  now  a  word  of  all  the  vague  threat- 
enings  against  the  sundering  universe  with  which  I  replied. 
Her  hand  was  on  my  shoulder  as  she  listened.  .  .  . 

But  I  do  know  that  even  on  this  first  morning  she  left 
me  with  a  sense  of  beautiful  unreality,  of  having  dipped 
for  some  precious  moments  into  heroic  gossamer.  All 
my  world  subjugation  seemed  already  as  evanescent  as 
the  morning  haze  and  the  vanishing  dews  as  I  stood,  a 
little  hidden  in  the  shadows  of  the  Killing  Wood  and  ready 
to  plunge  back  at  the  first  hint  of  an  observer,  and  watched 
her  slender  whiteness  flit  circumspectly  towards  the  house. 


§3 

Our  next  three  or  four  meetings  are  not  so  clearly 
defined.  We  did  not  meet  every  morning  for  fear  that  her 
early  rising  should  seem  too  punctual  to  be  no  more  than 
a  chance  impulse,  nor  did  we  go  to  the  same  place.  But 
there  stands  out  very  clearly  a  conversation  in  a  different 
mood.  We  had  met  at  the  sham  ruins  at  the  far  end  of 
the  great  shrubbery,  a  huge  shattered  Corinthian  portico 
of  rather  damaged  stucco  giving  wide  views  of  the  hills 
towards  Alfridsham  between  its  three  erect  pillars,  and 
affording  a  dry  seat  upon  its  fallen  ones.  It  was  an  over- 
cast morning,  I  remember  probably  the  hour  was  earlier; 
a  kind  of  twilight  clearness  made  the  world  seem  strange 
6  77 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

and  the  bushes  and  trees  between  us  and  the  house  very 
heavy  and  still  and  dark.  And  we  were  at  cross  purpose, 
for  now  it  was  becoming  clear  to  me  that  Mary  did  not 
mean  to  marry  me,  that  she  dreaded  making  any  promise 
to  me  for  the  future,  that  all  the  heroic  common  cause  I 
wanted  with  her,  was  quite  alien  to  her  dreams. 

"But  Mary/'  I  said  looking  at  her  colorless  delicate 
face,  " don't  you  love  me?  Don't  you  want  me?" 

"You  know  I  love  you,  Stevenage,"  she  said.  "You 
know." 

"But  if  two  people  love  one  another,  they  want  to  be 
always  together,  they  want  to  belong  to  each  other." 

She  looked  at  me  with  her  face  very  intent  upon  her 
meaning.  "Stevenage,"  she  said  after  one  of  those 
steadfast  pauses  of  hers,  "I  want  to  belong  to  myself.7^ 

"Naturally,"  I  said  with  an  air  of  disposing  of  an  argu- 
ment, and  then  paused. 

"Why  should  one  have  to  tie  oneself  always  to  one 
other  human  being?"  she  asked.  "Why  must  it  be  like 
that?" 

I  do  not  remember  how  I  tried  to  meet  this  extraor- 
dinary idea.  "One  loves,"  I  may  have  said.  The  subtle 
scepticisms  of  her  mind  went  altogether  beyond  my 
habits  of  thinking;  it  had  never  occurred  to  me  that  there 
was  any  other  way  of  living  except  in  these  voluntary  and 
involuntary  mutual  servitudes  in  which  men  and  women 
live  and  die.  "If  you  love  me,"  I  urged,  "if  you  love 

me I  want  nothing  better  in  all  my  life  but  to  love 

and  serve  and  keep  you  and  make  you  happy." 

She  surveyed  me  and  weighed  my  words  against  her 
own. 

"I  love  meeting  you,"  she  said.  "I  love  your  going 
78 


MARRIAGE   OF   LADY   MARY 

because  it  means  that  afterwards  you  will  come  again. 
I  love  this— this  slipping  out  to  you.  But  up  there, 
there  is  a  room  in  the  house  that  is  my  place — me — 
my  own.  Nobody  follows  me  there.  I  want  to  go  on 
living,  Steyenage,  just  as  I  am  living  now.  I  don't  want 
to  become  someone's  certain  possession,  to  be  just  usual 
and  familiar  to  anyone.  No,  not  even  to  you." 

"  But  if  you  love,"  I  cried. 

"To  you  least  of  all.  Don't  you  see? — I  want  to 
be  wonderful  to  you,  Stevenage,  more  than  to  anyone. 
I  want — I  want  always  to  make  your  heart  beat  faster. 
I  want  always  to  be  coming  .to  you  with  my  own  heart 
beating  faster.  Always  and  always  I  want  it  to  be  like 
that.  Just  as  it  has  been  on  these  mornings.  It  has 
been  beautiful — altogether  beautiful." 

"Yes,"  I  said,  rather  helplessly,  and  struggled  with 
great  issues  I  had  never  faced  before. 

"It  isn't,"  I  said,  "how  people  live." 

"It  is  how  I  want  to  live,"  said  Mary. 

"It  isn't  the  way  life  goes." 

"I  want  it  to  be.  Why  shouldn't  it  be?  Why  at  any 
rate  shouldn't  it  be  for  me?" 


I  made  some  desperate  schemes  to  grow  suddenly  rich 
and  powerful,  and  I  learnt  for  the  first  time  my  true 
economic  value.  Already  my  father  and  I  had  been 
discussing  my  prospects  in  life  and  he  had  been  finding 
me  vague  and  difficult.  I  was  full  of  large  political 
intentions,  but  so  far  I  had  made  no  definite  plans  for  a 

79 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

living  that  would  render  my  political  ambitions  possible. 
It  was  becoming  apparent  to  me  that  for  a  poor  man  in 
England,  the  only  possible  route  to  political  distinction 
is  the  bar,  and  I  was  doing  my  best  to  reconcile  myself 
to  the  years  of  waiting  and  practice  that  would  have  to 
precede  my  political  debut. 

My  father  disliked  the  law.  And  I  do  not  think  it 
reconciled  him  to  the  idea  of  my  being  a  barrister  that 
afterwards  I  hoped  to  become  a  politician.  "It  isn't 
in  our  temperament,  Stephen,"  he  said.  "It's  a  pushing, 
bullying,  cramming,  base  life.  I  don't  see  you  succeed- 
ing there,  and  I  don't  see  myself  rejoicing  even  if  you 
do  succeed.  You  have  to  shout,  and  Strattons  don't  shout ; 
you  have  to  be  smart  and  tricky  and  there's  never  been 
a  smart  and  tricky  Stratton  yet;  you  have  to  snatch 
opportunities  and  get  the  better  of  the  people  and  mis- 
represent the  realities  of  every  case  you  touch.  You're 
a  paid  misrepresenter.  They  say  you'll  get  a  fellowship, 
Stephen.  Why  not  stay  up,  and  do  some  thinking  for  a 
year  or  so.  There'll  be  enough  to  keep  you.  Write  a  little. ' ' 

"The  bar,"  I  said,  "is  only  a  means  to  an  end." 

"If  you  succeed." 

"If  I  succeed.  One  has  to  take  the  chances  of  life 
everywhere." 

"And  what  is  the  end  ?" 

' '  Constructive  statesmanship . ' ' 

"Not  in  that  way,"  said  my  father,  pouring  himself 
a  second  glass  of  port,  and  turned  over  my  high-sound- 
ing phrase  with  a.  faint  hint  of  distaste;  "Constructive 
Statesmanship.  No.  Once  a  barrister  always  a  barrister. 
You'll  only  be  a  party  politician.  .  .  .  Vulgar  men.  .  .  , 
Vulgar.  ...  If  you  succeed  that  is.  ..." 

80 


MARRIAGE   OF   LADY   MARY 

He  criticized  me  but  he  did  not  oppose  me,  and  already 
in  the  beginning  of  the  summer  we  had  settled  that  I 
should  be  called  to  the  bar. 

Now  suddenly  I  wanted  to  go  back  upon  all  these 
determinations.  I  began  to  demand  in  the  intellectual 
slang  of  the  time  "more  actuality, "'  and  to  amaze  my 
father  with  talk  about  empire  makers  and  the  greatness 
of  Lord  Strathcona  and  Cecil  Rhodes.  Why,  I  asked, 
shouldn't  I  travel  for  a  year  in  search  of  opportunity? 
At  Oxford  I  had  made  acquaintance  with  a  son  of  Pram- 
ley's,  the  big  Mexican  and  Borneo  man,  and  to  him  I 
wrote,  apropos  of  a  half-forgotten  midnight  talk  in  the 
rooms  of  some  common  friend.  He  wrote  back  with  the 
suggestion  that  I  should  go  and  talk  to  his  father,  and  I 
tore  myself  away  from  Mary  and  went  up  to  see  that 
great  exploiter  of  undeveloped  possibilities  and  have  one 
of  the  most  illuminating  and  humiliating  conversations 
in  the  world.  He  was,  I  remember,  a  little  pale-com- 
plexioned, slow-speaking  man  with  a  humorous  blue  eye, 
a  faint,  just  perceptible  northern  accent  and  a  trick  of 
keeping  silent  for  a  moment  after  you  had  finished  speak- 
ing, and  he  talked  to  me  as  one  might  talk  to  a  child  of 
eight  who  wanted  to  know  how  one  could  become  a 
commander-in-chief .  His  son  had  evidently  emphasized 
my  Union  reputation,  and  he  would  have  been  quite 
willing,  I  perceived,  to  give  me  employment  if  I  had 
displayed  the  slightest  intelligence  or  ability  in  any 
utilizable  direction.  But  quite  dreadfully  he  sounded  my 
equipment  with  me  and  showed  me  the  emptiness  of  my 
stores. 

"You  want  some  way  that  gives  you  a  chance  of  grow- 
ing rich  rapidly/1  he  said.  "Aye.  It's  not  a  bad  idea. 

81 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

But  there's  others,  you  know,  have  tried  that  game  before 

ye. 

"You  don't  want  riches  just  for  riches  but  for  an 
end.  Aye!  Aye!  It's  the  spending  attracts  ye.  You'd 
not  have  me  think  you'd  the  sin  of  avarice.  I'm  clear 
on  that  about  ye. 

"Well,"  he  explained,  "it's  all  one  of  three  things  we 
do,  you  know — prospecting  and  forestalling  and— just 
stealing,  and  the  only  respectable  way  is  prospecting. 
You'd  prefer  the  respectable  way,  I  suppose?  ...  I 
knew  ye  would.  Well,  let's  see  what  chances  ye  have." 

And  he  began  to  probe  my  practical  knowledge.  It 
was  like  an  unfit  man  stripping  for  a  medical  inspection. 
Did  I  know  anything  of  oil,  of  rubber,  of  sugar,  of  sub- 
stances generally,  had  I  studied  mineralogy  or  geology, 
had  I  any  ideas  of  industrial  processes,  of  technical 
chemistry,  of  rare  minerals,  of  labor  problems  and  the 
handling  of  alien  labor,  of  the  economics  of  railway  man- 
agement or  of  camping  out  in  dry,  thinly  populated 
countries,  or  again  could  I  maybe  speak  Spanish  or 
Italian  or  Russian?  The  little  dons  who  career  about 
Oxford  afoot  and  awheel,  wearing  old  gowns  and  mortar- 
boards, giggling  over  Spooner's  latest,  and  being  tremen- 
dous "characters"  in  the  intervals  of  concocting  the  rul- 
ing-class mind,  had  turned  my  mind  away  from  such 
matters  altogether.  I  had  left  that  sort  of  thing  to 
Germans  and  east-end  Jews  and  young  men  from  the 
upper-grade  board  schools  of  Sheffield  and  Birmingham. 
I  was  made  to  realize  appalling  wildernesses  of  igno- 
rance. .  .  . 

"You  see,"  said  old  Pramley,  "you  don't  seem  to  know 
anything  whatever.  It's  a  deeficulty.  It  '11  stand  in 

82 


MARRIAGE   OF   LADY   MARY 

your  way  a  little  now,  though  no  doubt  you'd  be  quick 
at  the  uptake — after  all  the  education  they've  given  ye. 
.  .  .  But  it  stands  in  your  way,  if  ye  think  of  setting 
out  to  do  something  large  and  effective,  just  immedi- 
ately. .  .  ." 

Moreover  it  came  out,  I  forget  now  how,  that  I  hadn't 
clearly  grasped  the  difference  between  cumulative  and 
non-cumulative  preference  shares.  .  .  . 

I  remember  too  how  I  dined  alone  that  evening  in  a 
mood  between  frantic  exasperation  and  utter  abasement 
in  the  window  of  the  Mediated  Universities  Club,  of  which 
I  was  a  junior  member  under  the  undergraduate  rule. 
And  I  lay  awake  all  night  in  one  of  the  austere  club 
bedrooms,  saying  to  old  Pramley  a  number  of  extremely 
able  and  penetrating  things  that  had  unhappily  not, 
occurred  to  me  during  the  progress  of  our  interview.  I 
didn't  go  back  to  Burnmore  for  several  days.  I  had  set 
my  heart  on  achieving  something,  on  returning  with  some 
earnest  of  the  great  attack  I  was  to  make  upon  the  separat- 
ing great  world  between  myself  and  Mary.  I  am  far 
enough  off  now  from  that  angry  and  passionate  youngster 
to  smile  at  the  thought  that  my  subjugation  of  things  in 
general  and  high  finance  in  particular  took  at  last  the  form 
of  proposing  to  go  into  the  office  of  Bean,  Medhurst, 
Stockton,  and  Schnadhorst  upon  half  commission  terms. 
I  was  awaiting  my  father's  reply  to  this  startling  new  sug- 
gestion when  I  got  a  telegram  from  Mary.  "We  are 
going  to  Scotland  unexpectedly.  Come  down  and  see 
me."  I  went  home  instantly,  and  told  my  father  I  had 
come  to  talk  things  over  with  him.  A  note  from  Mary 
lay  upon  the  hall-table  as  I  came  in  and  encountered  my 
father.  "I  thought  it  better  to  come  down  to  you/'  I 

83 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

said  with  my  glance  roving  to  find  that,  and  then  I  met 
his  eye.  It  wasn't  altogether  an  unkindly  eye,  but  I 
winced  dishonestly. 

"Talking  is  better  for  all  sorts  of  things,"  said  my 
father,  and  wanted  to  know  if  the  weather  had  been  as 
hot  in  London  as  it  had  been  in  Burnmore. 

Mary's  note  was  in  pencil,  scribbled  hastily.  I  was  to 
wait  after  eleven  that  night  near  the  great  rose  bushes 
behind  the  pavilion.  Long  before  eleven  I  was  there, 
on  a  seat  in  a  thick  shadow  looking  across  great  lakes 
of  moonlight  towards  the  phantom  .statuary  of  the 
Italianate  garden  and  the  dark  laurels  that  partly  masked 
the  house.  I  waited  nearly  an  hour,  an  hour  of  stillness 
and  small  creepings  and  cheepings  and  goings  to  and  fro 
among  the  branches. 

In  the  bushes  near  by  me  a  little  green  glow-worm 
shared  my  vigil. 

And  then,  wrapped  about  in  a  dark  velvet  cloak, 
still  in  her  white  dinner  dress,  with  shining,  gleaming, 
glancing  stones  about  her  dear  throat,  warm  and  won- 
derful and  glowing  and  daring,  Mary  came  flitting  out  of 
the  shadows  to  me. 

"My  dear,"  she  whispered,  panting  and  withdraw- 
ing a  little  from  our  first  passionate  embrace,  "Oh  my 
dear!  .  .  .  How  did  I  come?  Twice  before,  when  I  was  a 
girl,  I  got  out  this  way.  By  the  corner  of  the  conserva- 
tory and  down  the  laundry  wall.  You  can't  see  from 
here,  but  it's  easy—easy.  There's  a  tree  that  helps. 
And  now  I  have  come  that  way  to  you.  You!  . 

"Oh!  love  me,  my  Stephen,  love  me,  dear.  Love  me 
as  if  we  were  never  to  love  again.  Am  I  beautiful,  my 
dear?  Am  I  beautiful  in  the  moonlight?  Tell  me! 

84 


MARRIAGE   OF   LADY   MARY 

! 

"Perhaps  this  is  the  night  of  our  lives,  dear!  Perhaps 
never  again  will  you  and  I  be  happy!  .  .  . 

"But  the  wonder,  dear,  the  beauty!  Isn't  it  still? 
It's  as  if  nothing  really  stood  solid  and  dry.  As  if  every- 
thing floated.  .  .  . 

"Everyone  in  all  the  world  has  gone  to  sleep  to-night 
and  left  the  world  to  us.  Come!  Come  this  way  and 
peep  at  the  house,  there.  Stoop — under  the  branches. 
See,  not  a  light  is  left!  And  all  its  blinds  are  drawn 
and  its  eyes  shut.  One  window  is  open,  my  little  window, 
Stephen!  but  that  is  in  the  shadow  where  that  creeper 
makes  everything  black. 

"Along  here  a  little  further  is  night-stock.  Now 
—Now!  Sniff,  Stephen!  Sniff!  The  scent  of  it!  It 
lies — like  a  bank  of  scented  air.  .  .  .  And  Stephen,  there! 
Look!  ...  A  star — a  star  without  a  sound,  falling  out  of 
the  blue!  It's  gone!" 

There  was  her  dear  face  close  to  mine,  soft  under  the 
soft  moonlight,  and  the  breath  of  her  sweet  speech  mingled 
with  the  scent  of  the  night-stock.  .  .  . 

That  was  indeed  the  most  beautiful  night  of  my  life, 
a  night  of  moonlight  and  cool  fragrance  and  adventurous 
excitement.  We  were  transported  out  of  this  old  world 
of  dusty  limitations;  it  was  as  if  for  those  hours  the  curse 
of  man  was  lifted  from  our  lives.  No  one  discovered  us, 
no  evil  thing  came  near  us.  For  a  long  time  we  lay  close 
in  one  another's  arms  upon  a  bank  of  thyme.  Our  heads 
were  close  together;  her  eyelashes  swept  my  cheek,  we 
spoke  rarely  and  in  soft  whispers,  and  our  hearts  were 
beating,  beating.  We  were  as  solemn  as  great  mountains 
and  as  innocent  as  sleeping  children.  Our  kisses  were 
kisses  of  moonlight.  And  it  seemed  to  me  that  nothing 

85 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

that  had  ever  happened  or  could  happen  afterwards, 
mattered  against  that  happiness.  .  .  . 

It  was  nearly  three  when  at  last  I  came  back  into  my 
father's  garden.  No  one  had  missed  me  from  my  room 
and  the  house  was  all  asleep,  but  I  could  not  get  in  because 
I  had  closed  a  latch  behind  me,  and  so  I  stayed  in  the  little 
arbor  until  day,  watching  the  day  break  upon  long  beaches 
of  pale  cloud  over  the  hills  towards  Alfridsham.  I  slept 
at  last  with  my  head  upon  my  arms  upon  the  stone  table, 
until  the  noise  of  shooting  bolts  and  doors  being  unlocked 
roused  me  to  watch  my  chance  and  slip  back  again  into 
the  house,  and  up  the  shuttered  darkened  staircase  to  my 
tranquil,  undisturbed  bedroom. 


It  was  in  the  vein  of  something  evasive  in  Mary's 
character  that  she  let  me  hear  first  of  her  engagement 
to  Justin  through  the  Times.  Away  there  in  Scotland 
she  got  I  suppose  new  perspectives,  new  ideas;  the  glow 
of  our  immediate  passion  faded.  The  thing  must  have 
been  drawing  in  upon  her  for  some  time.  Perhaps  she 
had  meant  to  tell  me  of  it  all  that  night  when  she  had 
summoned  me  to  Burnmore.  Looking  back  now  I  am 
the  more  persuaded  that  she  did.  But  the  thing  came 
to  me  in  London  with  the  effect  of  an  immense  treachery. 
Within  a  day  or  so  of  the  newspaper's  announcement 
she  had  written 'me  a  long  letter  answering  some  argu- 
ment of  mine,  and  saying  nothing  whatever  of  the  people 
about  her.  Even  then  Justin  must  have  been  asking  her 
to  marry  him.  Her  mind  must  have  been  full  of  that 

86 


MARRIAGE   OF    LADY   MARY 

question.  Then  came  a  storm  of  disappointment, 
humiliation  and  anger  with  this  realization.  I  can  still 
feel  myself  writing  and  destroying  letters  to  her,  letters  of 
satire,  of  protest.  Oddly  enough  I  cannot  recall  the  letter 
that  at  last  I  sent  her,  but  it  is  eloquent  of  the  weak 
boyishness  of  my  position  that  I  sent  it  in  our  usual 
furtive  manner,  accepted  every  precaution  that  confessed 
the  impossibility  of  our  relationship.  "No,"  she  scribbled 
back,  "you  do  not  understand.  I  cannot  write.  I  must 
talk  to  you." 

We  had  a  secret  meeting. 

With  Beatrice  Normandy's  connivance  she  managed 
to  get  away  for  the  better  part  of  the  day,  and  we  spent 
a  long  morning  in  argument  in  the  Botanical  Gardens — 
that  obvious  solitude — and  afterwards  we  lunched  upon 
ham  and  ginger  beer  at  a  little  open-air  restaurant  near 
the  Broad  Walk  and  talked  on  until  nearly  four.  We 
were  so  young  that  I  think  we  both  felt,  beneath  our 
very  real  and  vivid  emotions,  a  gratifying  sense  of  roman- 
tic resourcefulness  in  this  prolonged  discussion.  There  is  ' 
something  ridiculously  petty  and  imitative  about  youth, 
something  too,  naively  noble  and  adventurous.  I  can 
never  determine  if  older  people  are  less  generous  and 
imaginative  or  merely  less  absurd.  I  still  recall  the 
autumnal  melancholy  of  that  queer,  neglected-looking 
place,  in  which  I  had  never  been  before,  and  which  I 
have  never  revisited — a  memory  of  walking  along  narrow 
garden  paths  beside  queer  leaf -choked  artificial  channels 
of  water  under  yellow-tinted  trees,  of  rustic  bridges  going 
nowhere  in  particular,  and  of  a  kind  of  brickwork  ruined 
castle,  greatly  decayed  and  ivy-grown,  in  which  we  sat 
for  a  long  time  looking  out  upon  a  lawn  and  a  wide 

87 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

gravel  path  leading  to  a  colossal  frontage  of  conser- 
vatory. 

I  must  have  been  resentful  and  bitter  in  the  begin- 
ning of  that  talk.  I  do  not  remember  that  I  had  any 
command  of  the  situation  or  did  anything  but  protest 
throughout  that  day.  I  was  too  full  of  the  egotism  of  the 
young  lover  to  mark  Mary's  moods  and  feelings.  It  was 
only  afterwards  that  I  came  to  understand  that  she  was 
not  wilfully  and  deliberately  following  the  course  that  was 
to  separate  us,  that  she  was  taking  it  with  hesitations  and 
regrets.  Yet  she  spoke  plainly  enough,  she  spoke  with  a 
manifest  sincerity  of  feeling.  And  while  I  had  neither 
the  grasp  nor  the  subtlety  to  get  behind  her  mind  I  per- 
ceive now  as  I  think  things  out  that  Lady  Ladislaw  had 
both  watched  and  acted,  had  determined  her  daughter's 
ideas,  sown  her  mind  with  suggestions,  imposed  upon  her 
a  conception  of  her  situation  that  now  dominated  all  her 
thoughts. 

"Dear  Stephen/ '  reiterated  Mary,  "I  love  you.  I 
do,  clearly,  definitely,  deliberately  love  you.  Haven't 
I  told  you  that?  Haven't  I  made  that  plain  to  you?" 

"But  you  are  going  to  marry  Justin!" 

"Stephen  dear,  can  I  possibly  marry  you?    Can  I?" 

"Why  not?  Why  not  make  the  adventure  of  life  with 
me?  Dare!" 

She  looked  down  on  me.  She  was  sitting  upon  a 
parapet  of  the  brickwork  and  I  was  below  her.  She 
seemed  to  be  weighing  possibilities. 

"Why  not?"  I  cried.  "Even  now.  Why  not  run 
away  with  me,  throw  our  two  lives  together?  Do  as 
lovers  have  dared  to  do  since  the  beginning  of  things! 

Let  us  go  somewhere  together " 

88 


MARRIAGE   OF   LADY   MARY 

"But  Stephen,"  she  asked  softly,  "where?" 

"Anywhere!" 

She  spoke  as  an  elder  might  do  to  a  child.  "No! 
tell  me  where — exactly.  Where  would  it  be?  Where 
should  we  go?  How  should  we  live?  Tell  me.  Make 
me  see  it,  Stephen." 

"You  are  too  cruel  to  me,  Mary,"  I  said.  "How 
can  I — on  the  spur  of  the  moment — arrange ?" 

"But  dear,  suppose  it  was  somewhere  very  grimy 
and  narrow!  Something — like  some  of  those  back  streets 
I  came  through  to  get  here.  Suppose  it  was  some  dread- 
ful place.  And  you  had  no  money.  And  we  were  both 
worried  and  miserable.  One  gets  ill  in  such  places.  If 
I  loved  you,  Stephen — I  mean  if  you  and  I — if  you  and 
I  were  to  be  together,  I  should  want  it  to  be  in  sunshine, 
I  should  want  it  to  be  among  beautiful  forests  and  moun- 
tains. Somewhere  very,  beautiful.  .  .  ." 

"Why  not?" 

"Because — to-day  I  know.  There  are  no  such  places 
in  the  world  for  us.  Stephen,  they  are  dreams." 

"For  three  years  now,"  I  said,  "I  have  dreamed  such 
dreams. 

"Oh!"  I  cried  out,  stung  by  my  own  words,  "but  this 
is  cowardice!  Why  should  we  submit  to  this  old  world! 
Why  should  we  give  up — things  you  have  dreamed  as  well 
as  I!  You  said  once — to  hear  my  voice — calling  in  the 
morning.  .  .  .  Let  us  take  each  other,  Mary,  now.  Now! 
Let  us  take  each  other,  and"— I  still  remember  my  im- 
potent phrase — "afterwards  count  the  cost!" 

"If  I  were  a  queen,"  said  Mary.  "But  you  see  I  am 
not  a  queen."  .  .  . 

So  we  talked  in  fragments  and  snatches  of  argument;, 

89 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

and  all  she  said  made  me  see  more  clearly  the  large  hope- 
lessness of  my  desire.  "At  least,"  I  urged,  "do  not  marry 
Justin  now.  Give  me  a  chance.  Give  me  three  years, 
Mary,  three  short  years,  to  work,  to  do  something!" 

She  knew  so  clearly  now  the  quality  of  her  own  in- 
tentions. 

"Dear  Stephen,"  she  explained,  "if  I  were  to  come 
away  with  you  and  marry  you,  in  just  a  little  time  I 
should  cease  to  be  your  lover,  I  should  be  your  squaw. 
I  should  have  to  share  your  worries  and  make  your  coffee 
— and  disappoint  you,  disappoint  you  and  fail  you  in  a 
hundred  ways.  Think!  Should  I  be  any  good  as  a 
squaw?  How  can  one  love  when  one  knows  the  coffee 
isn't  what  it  should  be,  and  one  is  giving  one's  lover  in- 
digestion? And  I  don't  want  to  be  your  squaw.  I  don't 
want  that  at  all.  It  isn't  how  I  feel  for  you.  I  don't 
want  to  be  your  servant  and  your  possession." 

"But  you  will  be  Justin's — squaw,  you  are  going  to 
marry  him!" 

"That  is  all  different,  Stevenage.  Between  him 
and  me  there  will  be  space,  air,  dignity,  endless  ser- 
vants  " 

"But,"  I  choked.  "You!  He!  He  will  make  love 
to  you,  Mary." 

"You  don't  understand,   Stephen." 

"He  will  make  love  to  you,  Mary.     Mary!  don't  you 

understand?    These  things We've  never  talked  of 

them.  .  .  .  You  will  bear  him  children!" 

"No,"  she  said. 

"But " 

"No.     He  promises.     Stephen, — I  am  to  own  myself.'1 

"But —    He  marries  you!" 
90 


MARRIAGE   OF    LADY   MARY 

"Yes,  Because  he — he  admires  me.  He  cannot  live 
without  me.  He  loves  my  company.  He  loves  to  be 
seen  with  me.  He  wants  me  with  him  to  enjoy  all  the 
things  he  has.  Can't  you  understand,  Stephen?" 

"But  do  you  mean ?" 

Our  eyes  met. 

"Stephen,"  she  said,  "I  swear." 

"But He  hopes." 

"I  don't  care.  He  has  promised.  I  have  his  promise. 
I  shall  be  free.  Oh!  I  shall  be  free — free!  He  is  a 
different  man  from  you,  Stephen.  He  isn't  so  fierce;  he 
isn't  so  greedy." 

"But  it  parts  us!" 

"Only  from  impossible  things." 

"It  parts  us." 

"It  does  not  even  part  us,  Stevenage.  We  shall  see 
one  another!  we  shall  talk  to  one  another." 

"I  shall  lose  you." 

"I  shall  keep  you." 

"But  I — do  you  expect  me  to  be  content  with  this?" 

"I  will  make  you  content.  Oh!  Stephen  dear,  can't 
there  be  love — love  without  this  clutching,  this  gripping, 
this  carrying  off?" 

"You  will  be  carried  altogether  out  of  my  world." 

"If  I  thought  that,  Stephen,  indeed  I  would  not  marry 
him." 

But  I  insisted  we  should  be  parted,  and  parted  in  the 
end  for  ever,  and  there  I  was  the  wiser  of  the  two.  I  knew 
the  insatiable  urgency  within  myself.  I  knew  that  if  I 
continued  to  meet  Mary  I  should  continue  to  desire  her 
until  I  possessed  her  altogether. 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 


§6 

I  cannot  reproduce  with  any  greater  exactness  than 
this  the  quality  and  gist  of  our  day-long  conversation. 
Between  us  was  a  deep  affection,  and  instinctive  attrac- 
tion, and  our  mental  temperaments  and  our  fundamental 
ideas  were  profoundly  incompatible.  We  were  both 
still  very  young  in  quality,  we  had  scarcely  begun  to 
think  ourselves  out,  we  were  greatly  swayed  by  the 
suggestion  of  our  circumstances,  complex,  incoherent 
and  formless  emotions  confused  our  minds.  But  I  see 
now  that  in  us  there  struggled  vast  creative  forces,  forces 
that  through  a  long  future,  in  forms  as  yet  undreamt  of, 
must  needs  mould  the  destiny  of  our  race.  Far  more 
than  Mary  I  was  accepting  the  conventions  of  our  time. 
It  seemed  to  me  not  merely  reasonable  but  necessary 
that  because  she  loved  me  she  should  place  her  life  in 
my  youthful  and  inexpert  keeping,  share  my  struggles  and 
the  real  hardships  they  would  have  meant  for  her,  devote 
herself  to  my  happiness,  bear  me  children,  be  my  in- 
spiration in  imaginative  moments,  my  squaw,  helper  and 
possession  through  the  whole  twenty-four  hours  of  every 
day,  and  incidentally  somehow  rear  whatever  family 
we  happened  to  produce,  and  I  was  still  amazed  in  the 
depths  of  my  being  that  she  did  not  reciprocate  this  simple 
and  comprehensive  intention.  I  was  ready  enough  I 
thought  for  equivalent  sacrifices.  I  was  prepared  to  give 
my  whole  life,  subordinate  all  my  ambitions,  to  the  effort 
to  maintain  our  home.  If  only  I  could  have  her,  have 
her  for  my  own,  I  was  ready  to  pledge  every  hour  I  had 
still  to  live  to  that  service.  It  seemed  mere  perversity 

92 


MARRIAGE    OF   LADY   MARY 

to  me  then  that  she  should  turn  even  such  vows  as  that 
against  me. 

"But  I  don't  want  it,  Stevenage,"  she  said.  "I 
don't  want  it.  I  want  you  to  go  on  to  the  service  of  the 
empire,  I  want  to  see  you  do  great  things,  do  all  the 
things  we've  talked  about  and  written  about.  Don't 
you  see  how  much  better  that  is  for  you  and  for  me — 
and  for  the  world  and  our  lives?  I  don't  want  yott  to 
become  a  horrible  little  specialist  in  feeding  and  keep- 
ing me." 

"Then — then  wait  for  me!"  I  cried. 

"But — I  want  to  live  myself!  I  don't  want  to  wait. 
I  want  a  great  house,  I  want  a  great  position,  I  want 
space  and  freedom.  I  want  to  have  clothes — and  be 
as  splendid  as  your  career  is  going;  to  be.  I  want  to  be  a 
great  and  shining  lady  in  your  life.  I  can't  always  live 
as  I  do  now,  dependent  on  my  mother,  whirled  about  by 
her  movements,  living  in  her  light.  Why  should  I  be 
just  a  hard-up  Vestal  Virgin,  Stephen,  in  your  honor? 
You  will  not  be  able  to  marry  me  for  years  and  years  and 
years — unless  you  neglect  your  work,  unless  you  throw 
away  everything  that  is  worth  having  between  us  in  order 
just  to  get  me." 

"  But  I  want  you,  Mary,"  I  cried,  drumming  at  the  little 
green  table  with  my  fist.  "I  want  you.  I  want  nothing 
else  in  all  the  world  unless  it  has  to  do  with  you." 

"You've  got  me — as  much  as  anyone  will  ever  have 
me.  You'll  always  have  me.  Always  I  will  write  to  you, 
talk  to  you,  watch  you.  Why  are  you  so  greedy,  Stephen? 
Why  are  you  so  ignoble?  If  I  were  to  come  now  and 
marry  you,  it  wouldn't  help  you.  It  would  turn  you 
into — a  wife-keeper,  into  the  sort  of  uninteresting  pre- 
7  93 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

occupied  man  one  sees  running  after  and  gloating  over  the 
woman  he's  bought  —  at  the  price  of  his  money  and  his 
dignity  —  and  everything.  .  .  .  It's  not  proper  for  a  man 
to  live  so  for  a  woman  and  her  children.  It's  dwarfish. 
It's  enslaving.  It's  —  it's  indecent.  Stephen!  I'd  hate 
you  so."  .  .  . 


We  parted  at  last  at  a  cab-rank  near  a  bridge  over 
the  Canal  at  the  western  end  of  Park  Village.  I  remember 
that  I  made  a  last  appeal  to  her  as  we  walked  towards 
it,  and  that  we  loitered  on  the  bridge,  careless  of  who 
might  see  us  there,  in  a  final  conflict  of  our  wills.  *  '  Before 
it  is  too  late,  Mary,  dear,"  I  said. 

She  shook  her  head,  her  white  lips  pressed  together. 

"  But  after  the  things  that  have  happened.  That  night 
—the  moonlight!" 

"It's  not  fair,"  she  said,  "for  you  to  talk  of  that.  It 
isn't  fair." 

"But  Mary.  This  is  parting.  This  indeed  is  part- 
ing." 

She  answered  never  a  word. 

"Then  at  least  talk  to  me  again  for  one  time  more." 

"Afterwards,"  she  said.  "Afterwards  I  will  talk  to 
you.  Don't  make  things  too  hard  for  me,  Stephen." 

"If  I  could  I  would  make  this  impossible.  It's  —  it's 
hateful." 

She  turned  to  the  kerb,  and  for  a  second  or  so  we  stood 
there  without  speaking.  Then  I  beckoned  to  a  hansom. 

She  told  me  Beatrice  Normandy's  address. 

I  helped  her  into  the  cab.  "Good-bye,"  I  said  with  a 
94 


MARRIAGE    OF    LADY    MARY 

;veak  affectation  of  an  everyday  separation,  and  I  turned 
:o  the  cabman  with  her  instructions. 

Then  again  we  looked  at  one  another.  The  cabman 
waited.  "All  right,  sir?"  he  asked. 

"  Go  ahead !"  I  said,  and  lifted  my  hat  to  the  little  white 
:ace  within. 

I  watched  the  cab  until  it  vanished  round  the  curve  of 
;he  road.  Then  I  turned  about  to  a  world  that  had  be- 
come very  large  and  empty  and  meaningless. 


§8 

I  struggled  feebly  to  arrest  the  course  of  events.  I 
Mary  some  violent  and  bitter  letters.  I  treated 
ler  as  though  she  alone  were  responsible  for  my  life 
md  hers;  I  said  she  had  diverted  my  energies,  betrayed 
ne,  ruined  my  life.  I  hinted  she  was  cold-blooded, 
nercenary,  shameless.  Someday  you,  with  that  quick 
;emper  of  yours  and  your  power  of  expression,  will  under- 
;tand  that  impulse  to  write,  to  pour  out  a  passionately 
mjust  interpretation  of  some  nearly  intolerable  situation, 
md  it  is  not  the  least  of  all  the  things  I  owe  to  Mary  that 
>he  understood  my  passion  and  forgave  those  letters  and 
'orgot  them.  I  tried  twice  to  go  and  see  her.  But  I  do 
lot  think  I  need  tell  you,  little  son,  of  these  self-inflicted 
lumiliations  and  degradations.  An  angry  man  is  none 
;he  less  a  pitiful  man  because  he  is  injurious.  The  hope 
:hat  had  held  together  all  the  project  of  my  life  was  gone, 
md  all  my  thoughts  and  emotions  lay  scattered  in  con- 
'usion.  .  .  . 

You  see,  my  little  son,  there  are  two  sorts  of  love; 

95 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

we  use  one  name  for  very  different  things.  The  love  that 
a  father  bears  his  children,  that  a  mother  feels,  that  comes 
sometimes,  a  strange  brightness  and  tenderness  that  is 
half  pain,  at  the  revelation  of  some  touching  aspect  of 
one  long  known  to  one,  at  the  sight  of  a  wife  bent  with 
fatigue  and  unsuspicious  of  one's  presence,  at  the  wretch- 
edness and  perplexity  of  some  wrong-doing  brother,  or  at 
an  old  servant's  unanticipated  tears,  that  is  love — like 
the  love  God  must  bear  us.  That  is  the  love  we  must 
spread  from  those  of  our  marrow  until  it  reaches  out  to  all 
mankind,  that  will  some  day  reach  out  to  all  mankind. 
But  the  love  of  a  young  man  for  a  woman  takes  this 
quality  only  in  rare  moments  of  illumination  and  com- 
plete assurance.  My  love  for  Mary  was  a  demand,  it  was 
a  wanton  claim  I  scored  the  more  deeply  against  her  for 
every  moment  of  happiness  she  gave  me.  I  see  now  that 
as  I  emerged  from  the  first  abjection  of  my  admiration 
and  began  to  feel  assured  of  her  affection,  I  meant  nothing 
by  her  but  to  possess  her,  I  did  not  want  her  to  be  happy 
as  I  want  you  to  be  happy  even  at  the  price  of  my  life; 
I  wanted  her.  I  wanted  her  as  barbarians  want  a  hunted 
enemy,  alive  or  dead.  It  was  a  flaming  jealousy  to  have 
her  mine.  That  granted,  then  I  was  prepared  for  all 
devotions.  .  .  . 

y  This  is  how  men  love  women.  Almost  as  exclusively 
and  fiercely  I  think  do  women  love  men.  And  the 
deepest  question  before  humanity  is  just  how  far  this 
jealous  greed  may  be  subdued  to  a  more  generous  passion. 
The  fierce  jealousy  of  men  for  women  and  women  for  men 
is  the  very  heart  of  all  our  social  jealousies,  the  underlying 
tension  of  this  crowded  modern  life  that  has  grown  out 
of  the  ampler,  simpler,  ancient  life  of  men.  That  is  why 

96 


MARRIAGE   OF   LADY    MARY 

we  compete  against  one  another  so  bitterly,  refuse  asso-  \ 
ciation  and  generous  co-operations,  keep  the  struggle  for 
existence  hard  and  bitter,  hamper  and  subordinate  the 
w6men  as  they  in  their  turn  would  if  they  could  hamper  / 
and  subordinate  the  men — because  each  must  thoroughly 
have  his  own. 

And  I  knew  my  own  heart  too  well  to  have  any  faith 
in  Justin  and  his  word.  He  was  taking  what  he  could, 
and  his  mind  would  never  rest  until  some  day  he  had  all. 
I  had  seen  him  only  once,  but  the  heavy  and  resolute 
profile  above  his  bent  back  and  slender  shoulders  stuck 
in  my  memory. 

If  he  was  cruel  to  Mary,  I  told  her,  or  broke  his  least 
promise  to  her,  I  should  kill  him. 


§9 

My  distress  grew  rather  than  diminished  in  the  days 
immediately  before  her  marriage,  and  that  day  itself 
stands  out  by  itself  in  my  memory,  a  day  of  wander- 
ing and  passionate  unrest.  My  imagination  tormented 
me  with  thoughts  of  Justin  as  a  perpetual  privileged 
wooer. 

Well,  well, — I  will  not  tell  you,  I  will  not  write  the 
ugly  mockeries  my  imagination  conjured  up.  I  was  con- 
stantly on  the  verge  of  talking  and  cursing  aloud  to  myself, 
or  striking  aimlessly  at  nothing  with  clenched  fists.  I  was 
too  stupid  to  leave  London,  too  disturbed  for  work  or  any 
distraction  of  my  mind.  I  wandered  about  the  streets 
of  London  all  day.  In  the  morning  I  came  near  going  to 
the  church  and  making  some  preposterous  interruptions. 

97 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

And  I  remember  discovering  three  or  four  carriages 
adorned  with  white  favors  and  a  little  waiting  crowd  out- 
side that  extinguisher-spired  place  at  the  top  of  Regent 
Street,  and  wondering  for  a  moment  or  so  at  their 
common  preoccupation,  and  then  understanding.  Of 
course,  another  marriage  !  Of  all  devilish  institu- 
tions! 

What  was  I  to  do  with  my  life  now?  What  was  to  be- 
come of  my  life?  I  can  still  recall  the  sense  of  blank  un- 
answerableness  with  which  these  questions  dominated  my 
mind,  and  associated  with  it  is  an  effect  of  myself  as  a 
small  human  being,  singular  and  apart,  wandering  through 
a  number  of  London  landscapes.  At  one  time  I  was  in  a 
great  grey  smoke-rimmed  autumnal  space  of  park,  much 
cut  up  by  railings  and  worn  by  cricket  pitches,  far  away 
from  any  idea  of  the  Thames,  and  in  the  distance  over 
the  tops  of  trees  I  discovered  perplexingly  the  clustering 
masts  and  spars  of  ships.  I  have  never  seen  that  place 
since.  Then  the  Angel  at  Islington  is  absurdly  mixed 
up  with  the  distresses  of  this  day.  I  attempted  some 
great  detour  thence,  and  found  myself  with  a  dumb 
irritation  returning  to  the  place  from  another  direction. 
I  remember  too  a  wide  street  over  which  passes  a  thunder- 
ing railway  bridge  borne  upon  colossal  rounded  pillars  of 
iron,  and  carrying  in  white  and  blue  some  big  advertise- 
ment, I  think  of  the  Daily  Telegraph.  Near  there  I 
thought  a  crowd  was  gathered  about  the  victim  of  some 
accident,  and  thrusting  myself  among  the  people  with  a 
vague  idea  of  help,  discovered  a  man  selling  a  remedy  for 
corns.  And  somewhere  about  this  north  region  I  dis- 
covered I  was  faint  with  hunger,  and  got  some  bread  and 
cheese  and  beer  in  a  gaudily  decorated  saloon  bar  with  a 

98 


MARRIAGE   OF   LADY   MARY 

sanded  floor.  I  resisted  a  monstrous  impulse  to  stay  in 
that  place  and  drink  myself  into  inactivity  and  stupefac- 
tion with  beer. 

Then  for  a  long  time  I  sat  upon  an  iron  seat  near  some 
flower  beds  in  a  kind  of  garden  that  had  the  headstones 
of  graves  arranged  in  a  row  against  a  yellow  brick  wall. 
The  place  was  flooded  with  the  amber  sunshine  of  a 
September  afternoon.  I  shared  the  seat  with  a  nursemaid 
in  charge  of  a  perambulator  and  several  scuffling  uneasy 
children,  and  I  kept  repeating  to  myself:  "By  now  it  is 
all  over.  The  thing  is  done." 

My  sense  of  the  enormity  of  London  increased  with  the 
twilight,  and  began  to  prevail  a  little  against  my  intense 
personal  wretchedness.  I  remember  wastes  of  building 
enterprise,  interminable  vistas  of  wide  dark  streets,  with 
passing  trams,  and  here  and  there  at  strategic  corners 
coruscating  groups  of  shops.  And  somewhere  I  came 
along  a  narrow  street  suddenly  upon  the  distant  prospect 
of  a  great  monstrous  absurd  place  on  a  steep  hill  against 
the- last  brightness  of  the  evening  sky,  a  burlesque  block  of 
building  with  huge  truncated  pyramids  at  either  corner, 
that  I  have  since  learnt  was  the  Alexandra  Palace.  It 
was  so  queer  and  bulky  that  it  arrested  and  held  my 
attention,  struck  on  my  memory  with  an  almost  dreamlike 
quality,  so  that  years  afterwards  I  went  to  Muswell  Hill 
to  see  if  indeed  there  really  was  such  a  place  on  earth,  or 
whether  I  had  had  a  waking  nightmare  during  my  wan- 
derings. .  .  . 

I  wandered  far  that  night,  very  far.  Some  girl  accosted 
me,  a  thin-faced  ruined  child  younger  by  a  year  or  so  than 
myself.  I  remembered  how  I  talked  to  her,  foolish  ramb- 
ling talk.  "If  you  loved  a  man,  and  he  was  poor,  you'd 

99 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

wait,"  I  said,  "you'd  stick  to  him.     You'd  not  leave  him 
just  to  get  married  to  a  richer  man." 

We  prowled  talking  for  a  time,  and  sat  upon  a  seat 
somewhere  near  the  Regent's  Park  canal.  I  rather  think 
I  planned  to  rescue  her  from  a  fallen  life,  but  somehow 
we  dropped  that  topic.  I  know  she  kissed  me.  I  have 
a  queer  impression  that  it  came  into  my  head  to  marry 
her.  I  put  all  my  loose  money  in  her  hands  at  last  and 
went  away  extraordinarily  comforted  by  her,  I  know  not 
how,  leaving  her  no  doubt  wondering  greatly. 

•  J  did  not  go  to  bed  that  night  at  all,  nor  to  the  office 
next  morning.  I  never  showed  myself  in  the  office  again. 
Instead  I  went  straight  down  to  my  father,  and  told  him 
I  wanted  to  go  to  the  war  forthwith.  I  had  an  indistinct 
memory  of  a  promise  I  had  made  Mary  to  stay  in  England, 
but  I  felt  it  was  altogether  unendurable  that  I  should 
ever  meet  her  again.  My  father  sat  at  table  over  the 
remains  of  his  lunch,  and  regarded  me  with  astonishment, 
with  the  beginnings  of  protest. 

"I  want  to  get  away,"  I  said,  and  to  my  own  amaze- 
ment and  shame  I  burst  into  tears. 

"My  boy!"  he  gasped,  astonished  and  terrified. 
"You've — you've  not  done — some  foolish  tiling?" 

"No,"  I  said,  already  wiping  the  tears  from  my  face, 
"nothing.  .  .  .  But  I  want  to  go  away." 

"You  shall  do  as  you  please,"  he  said,  and  sat  for  a 
moment  regarding  his  only  son  with  unfathomable  eyes. 

Then  he  got  up  with  a  manner  altogether  matter-of- 
fact,  came  half-way  round  the  table  and  mixed  me  a 
whisky  and  soda.  "It  won't  be  much  of  a  war,  I'm 
told,"  he  said  with  the  syphon  in  his  hands,  breaking 
a  silence,  '"I  sometimes  wish — I  had  seen  a  bit  of 

100 


MARRIAGE  OF  'LADY    M/iRViiA 

soldiering.  And  this  seems  to  be  an  almost  unavoidable 
war.  Now,  at  any  rate,  it's  unavoidable.  .  .  .  Drink 
this  and  have  a  biscuit." 

He  turned  to  the  mantelshelf,  and  filled  his  pipe  with 

his  broad  back  to  me.     "Yes,"  he  said,  "you You'll 

be  interested  in  the  war.     I  hope I  hope  you'll 

have  a  good  time  there.  .  .  ." 


CHAPTER  THE   FIFTH 
THE  WAR  IN  SOUTH  AFRICA 

MARY  and  I  did  not  meet  again  for  five  years,  and 
for  nearly  all  that  time  I  remained  in  South  Africa. 
I  went  from  England  a  boy;  I  came  back  seasoned  into 
manhood.  They  had  been  years  of  crowded  experience, 
rapid  yet  complicated  growth,  disillusionment  and  thought. 
Responsibility  had  come  to  me.  I  had  seen  death,  I  had 
seen  suffering,  and  held  the  lives  of  men  in  my  hands. 

Of  course  one  does  not  become  a  soldier  on  active 
service  at  once  for  the  wishing,  and  there  was  not  at 
first  that  ready  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  home 
military  authorities  which  arose  later,  to  send  out  young 
enthusiasts.  I  could  ride  and  shoot  fairly  well,  and 
accordingly  I  decided  to  go  on  my  own  account  to  Durban 
— for  it  was  manifest  that  things  would  begin  in  Natal — 
and  there  attach  myself  to  some  of  the  local  volunteer 
corps  that  would  certainly  be  raised.  This  took  me  out 
of  England  at  once,  a  thing  that  fell  in  very  well  with 
my  mood.  I  would,  I  was  resolved,  begin  life  afresh.  I 
would  force  myself  to  think  of  nothing  but  the  war.  I 
would  never  if  I  could  help  it  think  of  Mary  again. 

The  war  had  already  begun  when  I  reached  Durban. 
The  town  was  seething  with  the  news  of  a  great  British 

102 


WAR 

victory  at  Dundee.  We  came  into  the  port  through 
rain  and  rough  weather  and  passed  a  big  white  liner 
loaded  up  feverishly  from  steam  tenders  with  wealthy 
refugees  going  England-ward.  From  two  troopships 
against  the  wharves  there  was  a  great  business  of  land- 
ing horses — the  horses  of  the  dragoons  and  hussars  from 
India.  I  spent  the  best  part  of  my  first  night  in  South 
Africa  in  the  streets  looking  in  vain  for  a  bedroom, 
and  was  helped  at  last  by  a  kindly  rickshaw  Zulu  to  a 
shanty  where  I  slept  upon  three  chairs.  I  remember 
I  felt  singularly  unwanted. 

The  next  day  I  set  about  my  volunteering.  By  mid- 
day I  had  opened  communications  with  that  extremely 
untried  and  problematical  body,  the  Imperial  Light 
Horse,  and  in  three  days  more  I  was  in  the  company  of  a 
mixed  batch  of  men,  mostly  Australian  volunteers,  on 
my  way  to  a  place  I  had  never  heard  of  before  called 
Ladysmith,  through  a  country  of  increasing  picturesque- 
ness  and  along  a  curious  curving  little  line  whose  down 
traffic  seemed  always  waiting  in  sidings,  and  consisted  of 
crowded  little  trains  full  of  pitiful  fugitives,  white,  brown, 
and  black,  stifled  and  starving.  They  were  all  clamoring 
to  buy  food  and  drink — and  none  seemed  forthcoming. 
We  shunted  once  to  allow  a  southbound  train  to  pass,  a 
peculiar  train  that  sent  everyone  on  to  the  line  to  see — • 
prisoners  of  war!  There  they  were,  real  live  enemies, 
rather  glum,  looking  out  at  us  with  faces  very  like  our 
own — but  rather  more  unshaven.  They  had  come  from 
the  battle  of  Elandslaagte.  .  .  . 

I  had  never  been  out  of  England  before  except  for 
a  little  mountaineering  in  the  French  Alps  and  one 
walking  excursion  in  the  Black  Forest,  and  the  scenery 

103 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

of  lower  Natal  amazed  me.  I  had  expected  nothing 
nearly  so  tropical,  so  rich  and  vivid.  There  were  little 
Mozambique  monkeys  chattering  in  the  thick-set  trees 
beside  the  line  and  a  quantity  of  unfamiliar  birds  and 
gaudy  flowers  amidst  the  abundant  deep  greenery. 
There  were  aloe  and  cactus  hedges,  patches  of  unfamiliar 
cultivation  upon  the  hills;  bunchy,  frondy  growths  that 
I  learnt  were  bananas  and  plantains,  and  there  were 
barbaric  insanitary-looking  Kaffir  kraals  which  I  sup- 
posed had  vanished  before  our  civilization.  There  seemed 
an  enormous  quantity  of  Kaffirs  all  along  the  line — and 
all  of  them,  men,  women,  and  children,  were  staring  at  the 
train.  The  scenery  grew  finer  and  bolder,  and  more  bare 
and  mountainous,  until  at  last  we  came  out  into  the  great 
basin  in  which  lay  this  Ladysmith.  It  seemed  a  poor 
unimportant,  dusty  little  street  of  huts  as  we  approached 
it,  but  the  great  crests  beyond  struck  me  as  very  beautiful 
in  the  morning  light.  .  .  . 

I  forgot  the  beauty  of  those  hills  as  we  drew  into  the 
station.  It  was  the  morning  after  the  surrender  of 
Nicholson's  Nek.  I  had  come  to  join  an  army  already 
tremendously  astonished  and  shattered.  The  sunny 
prospect  of  a  triumphal  procession  to  Pretoria  which  had 
been  still  in  men's  minds  at  Durban  had  vanished  al- 
together. In  rather  less  than  a  fortnight  of  stubborn 
fighting  we  had  displayed  a  strategy  that  was  flighty 
rather  than  brilliant,  and  lost  a  whole  battery  of  guns 
and  nearly  twelve  hundred  prisoners.  We  had  had  com- 
pensations, our  common  soldiers  were  good  stuff  at  any 
rate,  but  the  fact  was  clear  that  we  were  fighting  an  army 
not  only  very  much  bigger  than  ours  but  better  equipped, 
with  bigger  guns,  better  information,  and  it  seemed 

104 


WAR 

superior  strategy.  We  were  being  shoved  back  into  this 
Ladysmith  and  encircled.  This  confused,  disconcerted, 
and  thoroughly  bad-tempered  army,  whose  mules  and 
bullocks  cumbered  the  central  street  of  the  place,  was  all 
that  was  left  of  the  British  Empire  in  Natal.  Behind  it 
was  an  unprotected  country  and  the  line  to  Pietermaritz- 
burg,  Durban,  and  the  sea. 

You  cannot  imagine  how  amazed  I  felt  at  it.  I  had 
been  prepared  for  a  sort  of  Kentucky  quality  in  the 
enemy,  illiteracy,  pluck,  guile  and  good  shooting,  but 
to  find  them  with  more  modern  arms  than  our  own,  more 
modern  methods!  Weren't  we  there,  after  all,  to  teach 
them!  Weren't  we  the  Twentieth  and  they  the  Eighteenth 
Century?  The  town  had  been  shelled  the  day  before 
from  those  very  hills  I  had  admired;  at  any  time  it 
might  be  shelled  again.  The  nose  of  a  big  gun  was 
pointed  out  to  me  by  a  blasphemous  little  private  in  the 
Devons.  It  was  a  tremendous,  a  profoundly  impressive, 
black  snout.  His  opinions  of  the  directing  wisdom  at 
home  were  unquotable.  The  platform  was  a  wild  con- 
fusion of  women  and  children  and  colored  people, — 
there  was  even  an  invalid  lady  on  a  stretcher.  Every 
non-combatant  who  could  be  got  out  of  Ladysmith  was 
being  hustled  out  that  day.  Everyone  was  smarting 
with  the  sense  of  defeat  in  progress,  everyone  was  disap- 
pointed and  worried;  one  got  short  answers  to  one's 
questions.  For  a  time  I  couldn't  even  find  out  where  I 
had  to  go.  .  .  . 

§    2 

I  fired  my  first  shot  at  a  fellow-creature  within  four 
days  of  my  arrival.  We  rode  out  down  the  road  to  the 

105 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

south  to  search  some  hills,  and  found  the  Boers  in  fair 
strength  away  to  the  east  of  us.  We  were  dismounted 
and  pushed  up  on  foot  through  a  wood  to  a  grassy  crest. 
There  for  the  first  time  I  saw  the  enemy,  little  respectable- 
looking  unsoldierlike  figures,  mostly  in  black,  dodging 
about  upon  a  ridge  perhaps  a  mile  away.  I  took  a  shot 
at  one  of  these  figures  just  before  it  vanished  into  a  gully. 
One  or  two  bullets  came  overhead,  and  I  tried  to  remember 
what  I  had  picked  up  about  cover.  They  made  a  sound, 
whijf-er-whijff,  a  kind  of  tearing  whistle,  and  there  was 
nothing  but  a  distant  crackling  to  give  one  a  hint  of  their 
direction  until  they  took  effect.  I  remember  the  peculiar 
smell  of  the  grass  amidst  which  I  crouched,  my  sudden 
disgust  to  realize  I  was  lying,  and  had  to  lie  now  for  an 
indefinite  time,  in  the  open  sunlight  and  far  from  any 
shade,  and  how  I  wondered  whether  after  all  I  had 
wanted  to  come  to  this  war. 

We  lay  shooting  intermittently  until  the  afternoon,  I 
couldn't  understand  why;  we  went  forward  a  little,  and 
at  last  retired  upon  Ladysmith.  On  the  way  down  to 
the  horses,  I  came  upon  my  first  dead  man.  He  was 
lying  in  a  crumpled  heap  not  fifty  yards  from  where  I 
had  been  shooting.  There  he  lay,  the  shattered  mirror 
of  a  world.  One  side  of  his  skull  over  the  ear  had  been 
knocked  away  by  a  nearly  spent  bullet,  and  he  was 
crumpled  up  and  face  upward  as  though  he  had  struggled 
to  his  feet  and  fallen  back.  He  looked  rather  horrible, 
with  blue  eyes  wide  open  and  glassily  amazed,  and  the 
black  flies  clustering  upon  his  clotted  wound  and  round 
his  open  mouth.  .  .  . 

I  halted  for  a  moment  at  the  sight,  and  found  the 
keen  scrutiny  of  a  fellow  trooper  upon  me.  "No  good 

106 


WAR 

waiting  for  him,"  I  said  with  an  affectation  of  indifference. 
But  all  through  the  night  I  saw  him  again,  and  marvelled 
at  the  stupendous  absurdity  of  such  a  death.  I  was  a 
little  feverish,  I  remember,  and  engaged  in  an  interminable 
theological  argument  with  myself,  why  when  a  man  is 
dead  he  should  leave  so  queer  and  irrelevant  a  thing  as  a 
body  to  decay.  .  .  . 

I  was  already  very  far  away  from  London  and  Burnmore 
Park.     I  doubt  if  I  thought  of  Mary  at  all  for  many  days. 


§3 

It  isn't  my  business  to  write  here  any  consecutive 
story  of  my  war  experiences.  Luck  and  some  latent 
quality  in  my  composition  made  me  a  fairly  successful 
soldier.  Among  other  things  I  have  an  exceptionally 
good  sense  of  direction,  and  that  was  very  useful  to  me, 
and  in  Burnmore  Park  I  suppose  I  had  picked  up  many 
of  the  qualities  of  a  scout.  I  did  some  fair  outpost  work 
during  the  Ladysmith  siege,  I  could  report  as  well  as 
crawl  and  watch,  and  I  was  already  a  sergeant  when  we 
made  a  night  attack  and  captured  and  blew  up  Long 
Tom.  There,  after  the  fight,  while  we  were  covering  the 
engineers,  I  got  a  queer  steel  ball  about  the  size  of  a  pea 
in  my  arm,  a  bicycle  bearings  ball  it  was,  and  had  my  first 
experience  of  an  army  surgeon's  knife  next  day.  It  was 
much  less  painful  than  I  had  expected.  I  was  also  hit 
during  the  big  assault  on  the  sixth  of  January  in  the  left 
shoulder,  but  so  very  slightly  that  I  wasn't  technically 
disabled.  They  were  the  only  wounds  I  got  in  the  war, 
but  I  went  under  with  dysentery  before  the  relief;  and 

107 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

though  I  was  by  no  means  a  bad  case  I  was  a  very  yellow- 
faced,  brokdh-looking  convalescent  when  at  last  the  Boer 
hosts  rolled  northward  again  and  Buller's  men  came 
riding  across  the  flats.  .  .  . 

I  had  seen  some  stimulating  things  during  those  four 
months  of  actual  warfare,  a  hundred  intense  impressions 
of  death,  wounds,  anger,  patience,  brutality,  courage, 
generosity  and  wasteful  destruction — above  all,  wasteful 
destruction — to  correct  the  easy  optimistic  patriotism 
of  my  university  days.  There  is  a  depression  in  the  open- 
ing stages  of  fever  and  a  feebleness  in  a  convalescence  on  a 
starvation  diet  that  leads  men  to  broad  and  sober  views. 
(Heavens!  how  I  hated  the  horse  extract — 'chevriT  we 
called  it — that  served  us  for  beef  tea.)  When  I  came 
down  from  Ladysmith  to  the  sea  to  pick  up  my  strength 
I  had  not  an  illusion  left  about  the  serene,  divinely  ap- 
pointed empire  of  the  English.  But  if  I  had  less  national 
conceit,  I  had  certainly  more  patriotic  determination. 
That  grew  with  every  day  of  returning  health.  The 
reality  of  this  war  had  got  hold  of  my  imagination,  as 
indeed  for  a  time  it  got  hold  of  the  English  imagination 
altogether,  and  I  was  now  almost  fiercely  keen  to  learn  and 
do.  At  the  first  chance  I  returned  to  active  service,  and 
now  I  was  no  longer  a  disconsolate  lover  taking  war  for  a 
cure,  but  an  earnest,  and  I  think  reasonably  able,  young 
officer,  very  alert  for  chances. 

I  got  those  chances  soon  enough.  I  rejoined  our  men 
beyond  Kimberley,  on  the  way  to  Mafeking, — we  were 
the  extreme  British  left  in  the  advance  upon  Pretoria — 
and  I  rode  with  Mahon  and  was  ambushed  with  him  in  a 
little  affair  beyond  Koodoosrand.  It  was  a  sudden  brisk 
encounter.  We  got  fired  into  at  close  quarters,  but  we 

108 


WAR 

knew  our  work  by  that  time,  and  charged  home  and 
brought  in  a  handful  of  prisoners  to  make  up  for  the  men 
we  had  lost.  A  few  days  later  we  came  into  the  flattened 
ruins  of  the  quaintest  siege  in  history.  .  .  . 

Three  days  after  we  relieved  Mafeking  I  had  the  luck 
to  catch  one  of  Snyman's  retreating  guns  rather  easily, 
the  only  big  gun  that  was  taken  at  Mafeking.  I  came 
upon  it  unexpectedly  with  about  twenty  men,  spotted  a 
clump  of  brush  four  hundred  yards  ahead,  galloped  into  it 
before  the  Boers  realized  the  boldness  of  our  game,  shot 
all  the  draught  oxen  while  they  hesitated,  and  held  them 
up  until  Chambers  arrived  on  the  scene.  The  incident 
got  perhaps  a  disproportionate  share  of  attention  in  the 
papers  at  home,  because  of  the  way  in  which  Mafeking 
had  been  kept  in  focus.  I  was  mentioned  twice  again 
in  despatches  before  we  rode  across  to  join  Roberts  in 
Pretoria  and  see  what  we  believed  to  be  the  end  of  the 
war.  We  were  too  late  to  go  on  up  to  Komatipoort,  and 
had  some  rather  blank  and  troublesome  work  on  the  north 
side  of  the  town.  That  was  indeed  the  end  of  the  great 
war;  the  rest  was  a  struggle  with  guerillas. 

Everyone  thought  things  were  altogether  over.  I 
wrote  to  my  father  discussing  the  probable  date  of  my 
return.  But  there  were  great  chances  still  to  come  for 
an  active  young  officer;  the  guerilla  war  was  to  prolong 
the  struggle  yet  for  a  whole  laborious,  eventful  year, 
and  I  was  to  make  the  most  of  those  later  opportuni- 
ties. .  .  . 

Those  years  in  South  Africa  are  stuck  into  my  mind 

like — like   those   pink   colored   pages   about   something 

else  one  finds  at  times  in  a  railway  Indicateur.     Chance 

had  put  this  work  in  my  way,  and  started  me  upon  it 

8  109 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

with  a  reputation  that  wasn't  altogether  deserved,  and  I 
found  I  could  only  live  up  to  it  and  get  things  done  well 
by  a  fixed  and  extreme  concentration  of  my  attention. 
But  the  whole  business  was  so  interesting  that  I  found 
it  possible  to  make  that  concentration.  Essentially  war- 
fare is  a  game  of  elaborate  but  witty  problems  in  precau- 
tion and  anticipation,  with  amazing  scope  for  invention. 
You  so  saturate  your  mind  with  the  facts  and  possibilities 
of  the  situation  that  intuitions  emerge.  It  did  not  do  to 
think  of  anything  beyond  those  facts  and  possibilities  and 
dodges  and  counterdodges,  for  to  do  so  was  to  let  in  irrele- 
vant and  distracting  lights.  During  all  that  concluding 
year  of  service  I  was  not  so  much  myself  as  a  forced  and 
artificial  thing  I  made  out  of  myself  to  meet  the  special 
needs  of  the  time.  I  became  a  Boer-outwitting  animal. 
When  I  was  tired  of  this  specialized  thinking,  then  the 
best  relief,  I  found,  was  some  quite  trivial  occupation — 
playing  poker,  yelling  in  the  chorus  of  some  interminable 
song  one  of  the  men  would  sing,  or  coining  South  African 
Limericks  or  playing  burlesque  bouts-rimes  with  Fred 
Maxim,  who  was  then  my  second  in  command.  .  .  . 

Yet  occasionally  thought  overtook  me.  I  remember 
lying  one  night  out  upon  a  huge  dark  hillside,  in  a  melan- 
choly wilderness  of  rock-ribbed  hills,  waiting  for  one  of  the 
flying  commandoes  that  were  breaking  northward  from 
Cape  Colony  towards  the  Orange  River  in  front  of  Colonel 
Eustace.  We  had  been  riding  all  day,  I  was  taking  risks 
in  what  I  was  doing,  and  there  is  something  very  cheerless 
in  a  tireless  bivouac.  My  mind  became  uncontrollably 
active. 

It  was  a  clear,  still  night.  The  young  moon  set  early 
in  a  glow  of  white  that  threw  the  jagged  contours  of  a  hill 

no 


-WAR 

to  the  south-east  into  strange,  weird  prominence.  The 
patches  of  moonshine  evaporated  from  the  summits  of  the 
nearer  hills,  and  left  them  hard  and  dark.  Then  there 
was  nothing  but  a  great  soft  black  darkness  below  that 
jagged  edge  and  above  it  the  stars  very  large  and  bright. 
Somewhere  under  that  enormous  serenity  to  the  south 
of  us  the  hunted  Boers  must  be  halting  to  snatch  an  hour 
or  so  of  rest,  and  beyond  them  again  extended  the  long 
thin  net  of  the  pursuing  British.  It  all  seemed  infinitely 
small  and  remote,  there  was  no  sound  of  it,  no  hint  of  it, 
no  searchlight  at  work,  no  faintest  streamer  of  smoke  nor 
the  reflection  of  a  solitary  fire  in  the  sky.  .  .  . 

All  this  business  that  had  held  my  mind  so  long  was 
reduced  to  insignificance  between  the  blackness  of  the 
hills  and  the  greatness  of  the  sky;  a  little  trouble,  it 
seemed  of  no  importance  under  the  Southern  Cross.  And 
I  fell  wondering,  as  I  had  not  wondered  for  long,  at  the 
forces  that  had  brought  me  to  this  occupation  and  the 
strangeness  of  this  game  of  war  which  had  filled  the  minds 
and  tempered  the  spirit  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  men 
for  two  hard-living  years. 

I  fell  thinking  of  the  dead. 

No  soldier  in  a  proper  state-  of  mind  ever  thinks  of  the 
dead.  At  times  of  course  one  suspects,  one  catches  a 
man  glancing  at  the  pair  of  boots  sticking  out  stiffly  from 
under  a  blanket,  but  at  once  he  speaks  of  other  things. 
Nevertheless  some  suppressed  part  of  my  being  had  been 
stirring  up  ugly  and  monstrous  memories,  of  distortion, 
disfigurement,  torment  and  decay,  of  dead  men  in  stained 
and  ragged  clothes,  with  their  sole-worn  boots  drawn 
up  under  them,  of  the  blood  trail  of  a  dying  man  who  had 
crawled  up  to  a  dead  comrade  rather  than  die  alone, 

in 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

of  Kaffirs  heaping  limp,  pitiful  bodies  together  for  burial, 
of  the  voices  of  inaccessible  wounded  in  the  rain  on 
Waggon  Hill  crying  in  the  night,  of  a  heap  of  men  we  found 
in  a  donga  three  days  dead,  of  the  dumb  agony  of  shell-torn 
horses,  and  the  vast  distressful  litter  and  heavy  brooding 
stench,  the  cans  and  cartridge-cases  and  filth  and  bloody 
rags  of  a  shelled  and  captured  laager.  I  will  confess  I 
have  never  lost  my  horror  of  dead  bodies;  they  are  dread- 
ful to  me — dreadful.  I  dread  their  stiff  attitudes,  their 
terrible  intent  inattention.  To  this  day  such  memories 
haunt  me.  That  night  they  nearly  overwhelmed  me.  .  .  . 
I  thought  of  the  grim  silence  of  the  surgeon's  tent,  the 
miseries  and  disordered  ravings  of  the  fever  hospital,  of 
the  midnight  burial  of  a  journalist  at  Ladysmith  with 
the  distant  searchlight  on  Bulwana  flicking  suddenly  upon 
our  faces  and  making  the  coffin  shine  silver  white.  What 
a -vast  trail  of  destruction  South  Africa  had  become!  I 
thought  of  the  black  scorched  stones  of  burnt  and  aban- 
doned farms,  of  wretched  natives  we  had  found  shot 
like  dogs  and  flung  aside,  rottenly  ainazed,  decaying  in 
infinite  indignity;  of  stories  of  treachery  and  fierce  re- 
venges sweeping  along  in  the  trail  of  the  greater  fighting. 
I  knew  too  well  of  certain  atrocities, — one  had  to  believe 
them  incredibly  stupid  to  escape  the  conviction  that 
they  were  incredibly  evil. 

For  a  time  my  mind  could  make  no  headway  against 
its  monstrous  assemblage  of  horror.  There  was  some- 
thing in  that  jagged  black  hill  against  the  moonshine 
and  the  gigantic  basin  of  darkness  out  of  which  it  rose 
that  seemed  to  gather  all  these  gaunt  and  grisly  effects 
into  one  appalling  heap  of  agonizing  futility.  That  rock  rose 
up  and  crouched  like  something  that  broods  and  watches. 

112 


WAR 

I  remember  I  sat  up  in  the  darkness  staring  at  it. 

I  found  myself  murmuring:  "Get  the  proportions 
of  things,  get  the  proportions  of  things !"  I  had  an 
absurd  impression  of  a  duel  between  myself  and  the 
cavernous  antagonism  of  the  huge  black  spaces  below  me. 
I  argued  that  all  this  pain  and  waste  was  no  more  than 
the  selvedge  of  a  proportionately  limitless  fabric  of  sane, 
interested,  impassioned  and  joyous  living.  These  stiff 
still  memories  seemed  to  refute  me.  But  why  us?  they 
seemed  to  insist.  In  some  way  it's  essential, — this 
margin.  I  stopped  at  that. 

"If  all  this  pain,  waste,  violence,  anguish  is  essential 
to  life,  why  does  my  spirit  rise  against  it?  What  is 
wrong  with  me?"  I  got  from  that  into  a  corner  of  self- 
examination.  Did  I  respond  overmuch  to  these  painful 
aspects  in  life?  When  I  was  a  boy  I  had  never  had  the 
spirit  even  to  kill  rats.  Siddons  came  into  the  meditation, 
Siddons,  the  essential  Englishman,  a  little  scornful,  throw- 
ing out  contemptuous  phrases.  Soft!  Was  I  a  soft? 
What  was  a  soft?  Something  not  rough,  not  hearty  and 
bloody!  I  felt  I  had  to  own  to  the  word — after  years  of 
resistance.  A  dreadful  thing  it  is  when  a  great  empire 
has  to  rely  upon  soft  soldiers. 

Was  civilization  breeding  a  type  of  human  being  too 
tender  to  go  on  living?  I  stuck  for  a  time  as  one  does  on 
these  nocturnal  occasions  at  the  word  "hypersensitive," 
going  round  it  and  about  it.  ... 

I  do  not  know  now  how  it  was  that  I  passed  from 
a  mood  so  darkened  and  sunless  to  one  of  exceptional 
exaltation,  but  I  recall  very  clearly  that  I  did.  I  believe 
that  I  made  a  crowning  effort  against  this  despair  and 
horror  that  had  found  me  out  in  the  darkness  and  over- 

"3 
* 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

come.  I  cried  in  my  heart  for  help,  as  a  lost  child  cries,  to 
God.  I  seem  to  remember  a  rush  of  impassioned  prayer, 
not  only  for  myself,  not  chiefly  for  myself,  but  for  all 
those  smashed  and  soiled  and  spoilt  and  battered  residues 
of  men  whose  memories  tormented  me.  I  prayed  to  God 
that  they  had  not  lived  in  vain,  that  particularly  those 
poor  Kaffir  scouts  might  not  have  lived  in  vain.  "They 
^,  are  like  children,"  I  said.  "It  was  a  murder  of  children. 
.  .  .  By  children!" 

My  horror  passed  insensibly.  I  have  to  feel  the  dread- 
fulness  of  these  things,  I  told  myself,  because  it  is  good 
for  such  a  creature  as  I  to  feel  them  dreadful,  but  if  one 
understood  it  would  all  be  simple.  Not  dreadful  at  all. 
I  clung  to  that  and  repeated  it, — "it  would  all  be  per- 
fectly simple."  It  would  come  out  no  more  horrible  than 
the  things  that  used  to  frighten  me  as  a  child, — the  shadow 
on  the  stairs,  the  white  moonrise  reflected  on  a  barked 
and  withered  tree,  a  peculiar  dream  of  moving  geometrical 
forms,  an  ugly  illustration  in  the  "Arabian  Nights."  .  .  . 

I  do  not  know  how  long  I  wrestled  with  God  and 
prayed  that  night,  but  abruptly  the  shadows  broke;  and 
very  suddenly  and  swiftly  my  spirit  seemed  to  flame  up 
into  space  like  some  white  beacon  that  is  set  alight. 
Everything  became  light  and  clear  and  confident.  I  was 
assured  that  all  was  well  with  us,  with  us  who  lived  and 
fought  and  with  the  dead  who  rotted  now  in  fifty  thousand 
hasty  graves.  .  .  . 

For  a  long  time  it  seemed  I  was  repeating  again  and 
again  with  soundless  lips  and  finding  the  deepest  comfort 
in  my  words: — "And  out  of  our  agonies  comes  victory, 
out  of  our  agonies  comes  victory !  Have  pity  on  us,  God 
our  Father!" 

114 


WAR 

I  think  that  mood  passed  quite  insensibly  from  waking 
to  a  kind  of  clear  dreaming.  I  have  an  impression  that 
I  fell  asleep  and  was  aroused  by  a  gun.  Yet  I  was  cer- 
tainly still  sitting  up  when  I  heard  that  gun. 

I  was  astonished  to  find  things  darkly  visible  about 
me.  I  had  not  noted  that  the  stars  were  growing  pale 
until  the  sound  of  this  gun  very  far  away  called  my  mind 
back  to  the  grooves  in  which  it  was  now  accustomed  to 
move.  I  started  into  absolute  wakeftdness.  A  gun?  .  .  . 

I  found  myself  trying  to  see  my  watch. 

I  heard  a  slipping  and  clatter  of  pebbles  near  me,  and 
discovered  Fred  Maxim  at  my  side.  ''Look!'*  he  said, 
hoarse  with  excitement.  " Already!'*  He  pointed  to  a 
string  of  dim  little  figures  galloping  helter-skelter  over 
the  neck  and  down  the  gap  in  the  hills  towards  us. 

They  came  up  against  the  pale  western  sky,  little 
nodding  swaying  black  dots,  and  flashed  over  and  were 
lost  in  the  misty  purple  groove  towards  us.  They  must 
have  been  riding  through  the  night — the  British  following. 
To  them  we  were  invisible.  Behind  us  was  the  shining 
east,  we  were  in  a  shadow  still  too  dark  to  betray  us. 

In  a  moment  I  was  afoot  and  called  out  to  the  men, 
my  philosophy,  my  deep  questionings,  all  torn  out  of  my 
mind  like  a  page  of  scribbled  poetry  plucked  out  of  a 
business  note-book.  Khaki  figures  were  up  all  about  me 
passing  the  word  and  hurrying  to  their  places.  All  the 
dispositions  I  had  made  overnight  came  back  clear  and 
sharp  into  my  mind.  We  hadn't  long  for  preparations 

It  seems  now  there  were  only  a  few  busy  moments 
before  the  fighting  began.  It  must  have  been  much  longer 
in  reality.  By  that  time  we  had  seen  their  gun  come 
over  and  a  train  of  carts.  They  were  blundering  right 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

into  us.  Every  moment  it  was  getting  lighter,  and  the 
moment  of  contact  nearer.  Then  " Crack!"  from  down 
below  among  the  rocks,  and  there  was  a  sudden  stoppage 
of  the -trail  of  dark  shapes  upon  the  hillside.  "  Crack !" 
came  a  shot  from  our  extreme  left.  I  damned  the  im- 
patient men  who  had  shot  away  the  secret  of  our  presence. 
But  we  had  to  keep  them  at  a  shooting  distance.  Would 
the  Boers  have  the  wit  to  charge  through  us  before  the 
daylight  came,  or  should  we  hold  them?  I  had  a  swift, 
disturbing  idea.  Would  they  try  a  bolt  across  our  front 
to  the  left?  Had  we  extended  far  enough  across  the  deep 
valley  to  our  left?  But  they'd  hesitate  on  account  of  their 
gun.  The  gun  couldn't  go  that  way  because  of  the  gullies 
and  thickets.  .  .  .  But  suppose  they  tried  it!  I  hung 
between  momentous  decisions.  .  .  . 

Then  all  up  the  dim  hillside  I  could  make  out  the 
Boers  halting  and  riding  back.  One  rifle  across  there 
flashed. 

We  held  them!  .  .  . 

We  had  begun  the  fight  of  Pieters  Nek,  which  ended 
before  midday  with  the  surrender  of  Simon  Botha  and 
over  seven  hundred  men.  It  was  the  crown  of  all  my 
soldiering. 

§4 

I  came  back  to  England  at  last  when  I  was  twenty- 
six.  After  the  peace  of  Vereeniging  I  worked  under  the 
Repatriation  Commission  which  controlled  the  distribution 
of  returning  prisoners  and  concentrated  population  to 
their  homes;  for  the  most  part  I  was  distributing  stock 
and  grain,  and  presently  manoeuvring  a  sort  of  ploughing 

116 


WAR 

flying  column  that  the  dearth  of  horses  and  oxen  made 
necessary,  work  that  was  certainly  as  hard  as  if  far  less 
exciting  than  war.  That  particular  work  of  replanting 
the  desolated  country  with  human  beings  took  hold  of 
my  imagination,  and  for  a  time  at  least  seemed  quite 
straightforward  and  understandable.  The  comfort  of 
ceasing  to  destroy ! 

No  one  has  written  anything  that  really  conveys  the 
quality  of  that  repatriation  process;  the  queer  business 
of  bringing  these  suspicious,  illiterate,  despondent  people 
back  to  their  desolated  homes,  reuniting  swarthy  fathers 
and  stockish  mothers,  witnessing  their  touchingly  inex- 
pressive encounters,  doing  what  one  could  to  put  heart 
into  their  resumption.  Memories  come  back  to  me  of 
great  littered  heaps  of  luggage,  bundles,  blankets,  rough 
boxes,  piled  newly  purchased  stores,  ready-made  doors, 
window  sashes  heaped  ready  for  the  waggons,  slow-moving, 
apathetic  figures  sitting  and  eating,  an  infernal  squawking 
of  parrots,  sometimes  a  wailing  of  babies.  Repatriation 
went  on  to  a  parrot  obligato,  and  I  never  hear  a  parrot 
squawk  without  a  flash  of  South  Africa  across  my  mind. 
All  the  prisoners,  I  believe,  brought  back  parrots — some 
two  or  three.  I  had  to  spread  these  people  out,  over  a 
country  still  grassless,  with  teams  of  war-worn  oxen,  mules 
and  horses  that  died  by  the  dozen  on  my  hands.  The  end 
of  each  individual  instance  was  a  handshake,  and  one 
went  lumbering  on,  leaving  the  children  one  had  deposited 
behind  one  already  playing  with  old  ration-tins  or  hunting 
about  for  cartridge-cases,  while  adults  stared  at  the  work 
they  had  to  do. 

k  There  was  something  elementary  in  all  that  redistribu- 
tion. I  felt  at  times  like  a  child  playing  in  a  nursery  and 

117 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

putting  out  its  bricks  and  soldiers  on  the  floor.  There 
was  a  kind  of  greatness  too  about  the  process,  a  quality 
of  atonement.  And  the  people  I  was  taking  back,  the 
men  anyhow,  were  for  the  most  part  charming  and  wonder- 
ful people,  very  simple  and  emotional,  so  that  once  a  big 
bearded  man,  when  I  wanted  him  in  the  face  of  an  over- 
flowing waggon  to  abandon  about  half-a-dozen  great 
angular  colored  West  Indian  shells  he  had  lugged  with 
him  from  Bermuda,  burst  into  tears  of  disappointment. 
I  let  him  take  them,  and  at  the  end  I  saw  them  placed 
with  joy  and  reverence  in  a  little  parlor,  to  become  the 
war  heirlooms  no  doubt  of  a  long  and  bearded  family. 
As  we  shook  hands  after  our  parting  coffee  he  glanced  at 
them  with  something  between  gratitude  and  triumph  in 
his  eyes. 

Yes,  that  was  a  great  work,  more  especially  for  a 
ripening  youngster  such  as  I  was  at  that  time.  The 
memory  of  long  rides  and  tramps  over  that  limitless  veld 
returns  to  me,  lonely  in  spite  of  the  creaking,  lumbering 
waggons  and  transport  riders  and  Kaffirs  that  followed 
behind.  South  Africa  is  a  country  not  only  of  immense 
spaces  but  of  an  immense  spaciousness.  Everything  is 
far  apart;  even  the  grass  blades  are  far  apart.  Some- 
times one  crossed  wide  stony  wastes,  sometimes  came 
great  stretches  of  tall,  yellow-green  grass,  wheel-high, 
sometimes  a  little  green  patch  of  returning  cultivation 
drew  nearer  for  an  hour  or  so,  sometimes  the  blundering, 
toilsome  passage  of  a  torrent  interrupted  our  slow  onward 
march.  And  constantly  one  saw  long  lines  of  torn  and 
twisted  barbed  wire  stretching  away  and  away,  and  here 
and  there  one  found  archipelagoes  as  it  were  in  this  dry 
ocean  of  the  skeletons  of  cattle,  and  there  were  places 

118 


WAR 

where  troops  had  halted  and  their  scattered  ration-tins 
shone  like  diamonds  in  the  sunshine.  Occasionally  I 
struck  talk,  some  returning  prisoner,  some  group  of  dis- 
charged British  soldiers  become  carpenters  or  bricklayers 
again  and  making  their  pound  a  day  by  the  work  of  re- 
building; always  everyone  was  ready  to  expatiate  upon 
the  situation.  Usually,  however,  I  was  alone,  thinking 
over  this  immense  now  vanished  tornado  of  a  war  and  this 
equally  astonishing  work  of  healing  that  was  following  it. 
I  became  keenly  interested  in  all  this  great  business, 
and  thought  at  first  of  remaining  indefinitely  in  Africa. 
Repatriation  was  presently  done  and  finished.  I  had 
won  Milner's  good  opinion,  and  he  was  anxious  for  me  to 
go  on  working  in  relation  to  the  labor  difficulty  that  rose 
now  more  and  more  into  prominence  behind  the  agricul- 
tural re-settlement.  But  when  I  faced  that  I  found  my- 
self in  the  middle  of  a  tangle  infinitely  less  simple  than 
putting  back  an  agricultural  population  upon  its  land. 


§5 

For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  was  really  looking  at 
the  social  fundamental  of  Labor. 

There  is  something  astonishingly  naive  in  the  uncon- 
sciousness with  which  people  of  our  class  float  over  the 
great  economic  realities.  All  my  life  I  had  been  hearing 
of  the  Working  Classes,  of  Industrialism,  of  Labor  Prob- 
lems and  the  Organization  of  Labor;  but  it  was  only  now 
in  South  Africa,  in  this  chaotic,  crude  illuminating  period 
of  putting  a  smashed  and  desolated  social  order  together 
again,  that  I  perceived  these  familiar  phrases  represented 

119 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

something — something  stupendously  real.  There  were, 
I  began  to  recognize,  two  sides  to  civilization;  one  tradi- 
tional, immemorial,  universal,  the  side  of  the  homestead, 
the  side  I  had  been  seeing  and  restoring;  and  there  was 
another,  ancient,  too,  but  never  universal,  as  old  at  least 
as  the  mines  of  Syracuse  and  the  building  of  the  pyramids, 
the  side  that  came  into  view  when  I  emerged  from  the 
dusty  station  and  sighted  the  squat  shanties  and  slender 
chimneys  of  Johannesburg,  that  uprooted  side  of  social 
life,  that  accumulation  of  toilers  divorced  from  the  soil, 
which  is  Industrialism  and  Labor  and  which  carries  such 
people  as  ourselves,  and  whatever  significance  and  possi- 
bilities we  have,  as  an  elephant  carries  its  rider. 

Now  all  Johannesburg  and  Pretoria  were  discussing 
Labor  and  nothing  but  Labor.  Bloemfontein  was  in  con- 
ference thereon.  Our  work  of  repatriation  which  had 
loomed  so  large  on  the  southernward  veld  became  here  a 
business  at  once  incidental  and  remote.  One  felt  that  a 
little  sooner  or  a  little  later  all  that  would  resume  and  go 
on,  as  the  rains  would,  and  the  veld-grass.  But  this  was 
something  less  kindred  to  the  succession  of  the  seasons 
and  the  soil.  This  was  a  hitch  in  the  upper  fabric.  Here 
in  the  great  ugly  mine-scarred  basin  of  the  Rand,  with  its 
bare  hillsides,  half  the  stamps  were  standing  idle,  ma- 
chinery was  eating  its  head  off,  time  and  water  were 
running  to  waste  amidst  an  immense  exasperated  dispu- 
tation. Something  had  given  way.  The  war  had  spoilt 
the  Kaffir  "boy,"  he  was  demanding  enormous  wages,  he 
was  away  from  Johannesburg,  and  above  all,  he  would  no 
longer  "go  underground." 

Implicit  in  all  the  argument  and  suggestion  about  me 
was  this  profoundly  suggestive  fact  that  some  people, 

120 


WAR 

quite  a  lot  of  people,  scores  of  thousands,  had  to  "go 
underground."  Implicit  too  always  in  the  discourse  was 
the  assumption  that  the  talker  or  writer  in  question 
wasn't  for  a  moment  to  be  expected  to  go  there.  Those 
others,  whoever  they  were,  had  to  do  that  for  us.  Before 
the  war  it  had  been  the  artless  Portuguese  Kaffir,  but  he 
alas!  was  being  diverted  to  open-air  employment  at 
Delagoa  Bay.  Should  we  raise  wages  and  go  on  with  the 
fatal  process  of  "spoiling  the  workers/'  should  we  by 
imposing  a  tremendous  hut-tax  drive  the  Kaffir  into  our 
toils,  should  we  carry  the  labor  hunt  across  the  Zambesi 
into  Central  Africa,  should  we  follow  the  lead  of  Lord 
Kitchener  and  Mr.  Creswell  and  employ  the  rather  dan- 
gerous unskilled  white  labor  (with  "  ideas "  about  strikes 
and  socialism)  that  had  drifted  into  Johannesburg,  should 
we  do  tremendous  things  with  labor-saving  machinery,  or 
were  we  indeed  (desperate  yet  tempting  resort!)  to  bring 
in  the  cheap  Indian  or  Chinese  coolie? 

Steadily  things  were  drifting  towards  that  last  tremen- 
dous experiment.  There  was  a  vigorous  opposition  in 
South  Africa  and  in  England  (growing  there  to  an  outcry), 
but  behind  that  proposal  was  the  one  vitalizing  conviction 
in  modern  initiative:  —  indisputably  it  would  pay,  it 
would  pay!  .  .  . 

The  human  mind  has  a  much  more  complex  and 
fluctuating  process  than  most  of  those  explanatory  people 
who  write  about  psychology  would  have  us  believe. 
Instead  of  that  simple,  direct  movement,  like  the  move- 
ment of  a  point,  forward  and  from  here  to  there,  one's 
thoughts  advance  like  an  army,  sometimes  extended  over 
an  enormous  front,  sometimes  in  echelon,  sometimes 
bunched  in  a  column  throwing  out  skirmishing  clouds  of 

121 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

emotion,  some  flying  and  soaring,  some  crawling,  some 
stopping  and  dying.  ...  In  this  matter  of  Labor,  for 
example,  I  have  thought  so  much,  thought  over  the  ground 
again  and  again,«eome  into  it  from  this  way  and  from  that 
way,  that  for  the  life  of  me  I  find  it  impossible  to  state 
at  all  clearly  how  much  I  made  of  these  questions  during 
that  Johannesburg  time.  I  cannot  get  back  into  those 
ancient  ignorances,  revive  my  old  astonishments  and 
discoveries.  Certainly  I  envisaged  the  whole  process  much 
less  clearly  than  I  do  now,  ignored  difficulties  that  have 
since  entangled  me,  regarded  with  a  tremendous  per- 
plexity aspects  that  have  now  become  lucidly  plain.  I 
came  back  to  England  confused,  and  doing  what  confused 
people  are  apt  to  do,  clinging  to  an  inadequate  phrase  that 
seemed  at  any  rate  to  define  a  course  of  action.  The  word 
"efficiency"  had  got  hold  of  me.  All  our  troubles  came, 
one  assumed,  from  being  "inefficient."  One  turned 
towards  politics  with  a  bustling  air,  and  was  all  for 
fault-finding  and  renovation. 

I  sit  here  at  my  desk,  pen  in  hand,  and  irace  figures 
on  the  blotting-paper,  and  wonder  how  much  I  under- 
stood at  that  time.  I  came  back  to  England  to  work 
on  the  side  of  "efficiency,"  that  is  quite  certain.  A  little 
later  I  was  writing  articles  and  letters  about  it,  so  that 
much  is  documented.  But  I  tjiink  I  must  have  appre- 
hended too  by  that  time  some  vague  outline  at  least  of 
those  wider  issues  in  the  saecular  conflict  between  the  new 
forms  of  human  association  and  the  old,  to  which  con- 
temporary politics  and  our  national  fate  are  no  more 
than  transitory  eddies  and  rufflings  of  the  surface  waters. 
It  was  all  so  nakedly  plain  there.  On  the  one  hand  was 
the  primordial,  on  the  other  the  rankly  new.  The  farm 

122 


WAR 

on  the  veld  stood  on  the  veld,  a  thing  of  the  veld,  a  thing 
rooted  and  established  there  and  nowhere  else.  The 
dusty,  crude,  brick-field  desolation  of  the  Rand  on  the 
other  hand  did  not  really  belong  with  any  particularity 
to  South  Africa  at  all.  It  vfas  one  witS  our  camps  and 
armies.  It  was  part  of  something  else,  something  still 
bigger:  a  monstrous  shadowy  arm  had  thrust  out  from 
Europe  and  torn  open  this  country,  erected  these  chim- 
neys, piled  these  heaps — and  sent  the  ration-tins  and 
cartridge-cases  to  follow  them.  It  was  gigantic  kindred 
with  that  ancient  predecessor  which  had  built  the  walls 
of  Zimbabwe.  And  this  hungry,  impatient  demand  for 
myriads  of  toilers,  this  threatening  inundation  of  black  or 
brown  or  yellow  bond-serfs  was  just  the  natural  voice  of 
this  colossal  system  to  which  I  belonged,  which  had 
brought  me  hither,  and  which  I  now  perceived  I  did  not 
even  begin  to  understand.  .  .  . 

One  day  when  asking  my  way  to  some  forgotten  destina- 
tion, I  had  pointed  out  to  me  the  Grey  and  Roberts  Deep 
Mine.  Some  familiarity  in  the  name  set  me  thinking 
until  I  recsdled  that  this  was  the  mine  in  which  I  had 
once  heard  Lady  Ladislaw  confesg  large  holdings,  this 
mine  in  which  gangs  of  indentured  Chinamen  would  pres- 
ently be  sweating  to  pay  the  wages  of  the  game-keepers 
and  roadmenders  in  Burnmore  Park.  .  .  . 

Yes,  this  was  what  I  was  taking  in  at  that  time,  but 
it  found  me — inexpressive;  what  I  was  saying  on  my  re- 
turn to  England  gave  me  no  intimation  of  the  broad 
conceptions  growing  in  my  mind.  I  came  back  to  be  one 
of  the  many  scores  of  energetic  and  ambitious  young 
men  who  were  parroting  "  Efficiency, "  stirring  up  people 
'and  more  particularly  stirring  up  themselves  with  the 

123 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

utmost  vigor, — and  all  the  time  within  their  secret  hearts 
more  than  a  little  at  a  loss.  .  .  . 


6 


While  I  had  been  in  South  Africa  circumstances  had 
conspired  to  alter  my  prospects  in  life  very  greatly. 
Unanticipated  freedoms  and  opportunities  had  come  to 
me,  and  it  was  no  longer  out  of  the  question  for  me  to 
think  of  a  parliamentary  career.  Our  fortunes  had 
altered.  My  father  had  ceased  to  be  rector  of  Burnmore, 
and  had  become  a  comparatively  wealthy  man. 

My  second  cousin,  Reginald  Stratton,  had  been  drowned 
in  Finland,  and  his  father  had  only  survived  the  shock 
of  his  death  a  fortnight;  his  sister,  Arthur  Mason's  first 
wife,  had  died  in  giving  birth  to  a  stillborn  child  the  year 
before,  and  my  father  found  himself  suddenly  the  owner 
of  all  that  large  stretch  of  developing  downland  and  build- 
ing land  which  old  Reginald  had  bought  between  Shad- 
dock and  Golding  on  the  south  and  West  Esher  station  on 
the  north,  and  in  addition  of  considerable  investments  in 
northern  industrials.  It  was  an  odd  collusion  of  mor- 
tality; we  had  had  only  the  coldest  relations  with  our 
cousins,  and  now  abruptly  through  their  commercial  and 
speculative  activities,  which  we  had  always  affected  to 
despise  and  ignore,  I  was  in  a  position  to  attempt  the 
realization  of  my  old,  political  ambitions. 

My  cousins'  house  had  not  beer\  to  my  father's  taste. 
He  had  let  it,  and  I  came  to  a  new  home  in  a  pleasant, 
plain  red-brick  house,  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  old  per- 
haps, on  an  open  and  sunny  hillside,  sheltered  by  trees 

124 


WAR 

eastward  and  northward,  a  few  miles  to  the  south-west  of 
Guilford.  It  had  all  the  gracious  proportions,  the  dig- 
nified simplicity,  the  roomy  comfort  of  the  good  build- 
ing of  that  time.  It  looked  sunward;  we  breakfasted  in 
sunshine  in  the  library,  and  outside  was  an  old  wall  with 
peach  trees  and  a  row  of  pillar  roses  heavily  in  flower. 
I  had  a  little  feared  this  place;  Burnmore  Rectory  had 
been  so  absolutely  home  to  me  with  its  quiet  serenities, 
its  ample  familiar  garden,  its  greenhouses  and  intimately 
known  corners,  but  I  perceived  I  might  have  trusted 
my  father's  character  to  preserve  his  essential  atmos- 
phere. He  was  so  much  himself  as  I  remembered  him 
that  I  did  not  even  observe  for  a  day  or  so  that  he  had 
not  only  aged  considerably  but  discarded  the  last  vestiges 
of  clerical  costume  in  his  attire.  He  met  me  in  front  of 
the  house  and  led  me  into  a  wide  panelled  hall  and  wrung 
my  hand  again  and  again,  deeply  moved  and  very  inex- 
pressive. "Did  you  have  a  good  journey?"  he  asked 
again  and  again,  with  tears  in  his  eyes.  "Did  you  have 
a  comfortable  journey?" 

"  I've  not  seen  the  house,"  said  I.     "  It  looks  fine." 

"You're  a  man,"  he  said,  and  patted  my  shoulder. 
"Of  course!  It  was  at  Burnmore." 

4 'You1  re  not  changed,"  I  said.  "You're  not  an  atom 
changed." 

"How  could  I?"  he  replied.  "Come — come  and  have 
something  to  eat.  You  ought  to  have  something  to  eat." 

We  talked  of  the  house  and  what  a  good  house  it  was, 
and  he  took  me  out  into  the  garden  to  see  the  peaches  and 
grape  vine  and  then  brought  me  back  without  showing 
them  to  me  in  order  to  greet  my  cousin.  "It's  very  like 
Burnmore,"  he  said  with  his  eyes  devouring  me,  "very 
9  125 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

like.  A  little  more  space  and — no  services.  No  services 
at  all.  That  makes  a  gap  of  course.  There's  a  little 
chap  about  here,  you'll  find — his  name  is  Wednesday — 
who  sorts  my  papers  and  calls  himself  my  secretary.  .  .  . 
Not  necessary  perhaps  but — I  missed  the  curate." 

He  said  he  was  reading  more  than  he  used  to  do  now 
that  the  parish  was  off  his  hands,  and  he  was  preparing 
material  for  a  book.  It  was,  he  explained  later,  to  take 
the  form  of  a  huge  essay  ostensibly  on  Secular  Canons, 
but  its  purport  was  to  be  no  less  than  the  complete 
secularization  of  the  Church  of  England.  At  first  he 
wanted  merely  to  throw  open  the  cathedral  chapters  to 
distinguished  laymen,  irrespective  of  their  theological 
opinions,  and  to  make  each  English  cathedral  a  centre  of 
intellectual  activity,  a  college  as  it  were  of  philosophers 
and  writers.  But  afterwards  his  suggestions  grew  bolder, 
the  Articles  of  Religion  were  to  be  set  aside,  the  creeds 
made  optional  even  for  the  clergy.  His  dream  became 
more  and  more  richly  picturesque  until  at  last  he  saw 
Canterbury  a  realized  Thelema,  and  St.  Paul's  a  new 
Academic  Grove.  He  was  to  work  at  that  remarkable 
proposal  intermittently  for  many  years,  and  to  leave 
it  at  last  no  more  than  a  shapeless  mass  of  memoranda, 
fragmentary  essays,  and  selected  passages  for  quotation. 
Yet  mere  patchwork  and  scrapbook  as  it  would  be,  I 
still  have  some  thought  of  publishing  it.  There  is  a 
large  human  charity  about  it,  a  sun  too  broad  and  warm,  a 
reasonableness  too  wide  and  free  perhaps  for  the  timid 
convulsive  quality  of  our  time,  yet  all  good  as  good  wine 
for  the  wise.  Is  it  incredible  that  a  day  should  come  when 
our  great  grey  monuments  to  the  Norman  spirit  should 
cease  to  be  occupied  by  narrow-witted  parsons  and  be- 

126 


WAR 

sieged  by  narrow-souled  dissenters,  the  soul  of  our  race  in 
exile  from  the  home  and  place  our  fathers  built  for  it?  ... 

If  he  was  not  perceptibly  changed,  I  thought  my  cousin 
Jane  had  become  more  than  a  little  sharper  and  stiffer. 
She  did  not  like  my  uncle's  own  personal  secularization, 
and  still  less  the  glimpses  she  got  of  the  ampler  intentions 
of  his  book.  She  missed  the  proximity  to  the  church  and 
her  parochial  authority.  But  she  was  always  a  silent 
woman,  and  made  her  comments  with  her  profile  and  not 
with  her  tongue.  .  .  . 

"I'm  glad  you've  come  back,  Stephen,"  said  my  father 
as  we  sat  together  after  dinner  and  her  departure,  with 
port  and  tall  silver  candlesticks  and  shining  mahogany 
between  us.  "I've  missed  you.  I've  done  my  best  to 
follow  things  out  there.  I've  got,  I  suppose,  every  press 
mention  there's  been  of  you  during  the  war  and  since. 
I've  subscribed  to  two  press-cutting  agencies,  so  that  if 
one  missed  you  the  other  fellow  got  you.  Perhaps  you'll 
like  to  read  them  over  one  of  these  days.  .  .  .  You  see, 
there's  not  been  a  soldier  in  the  family  since  the  Peninsular 
War,  and  so  I've  been  particularly  interested.  .  .  .  You 
must  tell  me  all  the  things  you're  thinking  of,  and  what 
you  mean  to  do.  This  last  stuff — this  Chinese  business — 
it  puzzles  me.  I  want  to  know  what  you  think  of  it — and 
everything." 

I  did  my  best  to  give  him  my  ideas  such  as  they  were. 
And  as  they  were  still  very  vague  ideas  I  have  no  doubt 
he  found  me  rhetorical.  I  can  imagine  myself  talking 
of  the  White  Man's  Burthen,  and  how  in  Africa  it  had 
seemed  at  first  to  sit  rather  staggeringly  upon  our  under- 
trained  shoulders.  I  spoke  of  slackness  and  planless- 
ness. 

127 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

"I've  come  back  in  search  of  efficiency."  I  have  no 
doubt  I  said  that  at  any  rate. 

"We're  trying  to  run  this  big  empire,"  I  may  have 
explained,  "with  under-trained,  under-educated,  poor- 
spirited  stuff,  and  we  shall  come  a  cropper  unless  we  raise 
our  quality.  I'm  still  Imperialist,  more  than  ever  I  was. 
But  I'm  an  Imperialist  on  a  different  footing.  I've  no 
great  illusions  left  about  the  Superiority  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxons.  All  that  has  gone.  But  I  do  think  it  will  be  a 
monstrous  waste,  a  disaster  to  human  possibilities  if  this 
great  liberal-spirited  empire  sprawls  itself  asunder  for  the 
want  of  a  little  gravity  and  purpose.  And  it's  here  the 
^work  has  to  be  done,  the  work  of  training  and  bracing  up 
and  stimulating  the  public  imagination.  .  .  ." 

Yes,  that  would  be  the  sort  of  thing  I  should  have  said 
in  those  days.  There's  an  old  National  Review  on  my 
desk  as  I  write,  containing  an  article  by  me  with  some  of 
those  very  phrases  in  it.  I  have  been  looking  at  it  in 
order  to  remind  myself  of  my  own  forgotten  eloquence. 

"Yes,"  I  remember  my  father  saying.  "Yes."  And 
then  after  reflection,  "But  those  coolies,  those  Chinese 
coolies.  You  can't  build  up  an  imperial  population  by 
importing  coolies." 

"I  don't  like  that  side  of  the  business  myself,"  I  said. 
"It's  detail." 

"Perhaps.  But  the  Liberals  will  turn  you  out  on  it 
next  year.  And  then  start  badgering  public  houses  and 
looting  the  church.  .  .  .  And  then  this  Tariff  talk! 
Everybody  on  our  side  seems  to  be  mixing  up  the  unity 
of  the  empire  with  tariffs.  It's  a  pity.  Salisbury 
wouldn't  have  stood  it.  Unity!  Unity  depends  on  a 
common  literature  and  a  common  language  and  common 

128 


WAR 

ideas  and  sympathies.  It  doesn't  unite  people  for  them 
to  be  forced  to  trade  with  each  other.  Trading  isn't 
friendship.  I  don't  trade  with  my  friends  and  I  don't 
make  friends  with  my  tradesmen.  Natural  enemies — 
polite  of  course  but  antagonists.  Are  you  keen  over  this 
Tariff  stuff,  Steve?" 

"Not  a  bit,"  I  said.  "That  too  seems  a  detail." 
"It  doesn't  seem  to  be  keeping  its  place  as  a  detail," 
said  my  father.  "Very  few  men  can  touch  tariffs  and  not 
get  a  little  soiled.  I  hate  all  this  international  sharping, 
all  these  attempts  to  get  artificial  advantages,  all  this 
making  poor  people  buy  inferior  goods  dear,  in  the  name 
of  the  flag.  If  it  comes  to  that,  damn  the  flag !  Custom- 
houses are  ugly  things,  Stephen;  the  dirty  side  of  nation- 
ality. Dirty  things,  ignoble,  cross,  cunning  things.  .  .  . 
They  wake  you  up  in  the  small  hours  and  rout  over  your 
bags.  ...  An  imperial  people  ought  to  be  an  urbane 
people,  a  civilizing  people — above  such  petty  irritating 
things.  I'd  as  soon  put  barbed  wire  along  the  footpath 
across  that  field  where  the  village  children  go  to 
school.  Or  claim  that  our  mushrooms  are  cultivated. 
Or  prosecute  a  Sunday-Society  Cockney  for  picking  my 
primroses.  Custom-houses  indeed !  It's  Chinese.  There 
are  things  a  Great  Country  mustn't  do,  Stephen.  A 
country  like  ours  ought  to  get  along  without  the  manners 
of  a  hard-breathing  competitive  cad.  ...  If  it  can't 
I'd  rather  it  didn't  get  along.  .  .  .  What's  the  good  of  a 
huckster  country? — it's  like  having  a  wife  on  the  streets. 
It's  no  excuse  that  she  brings  you  money.  But  since 
the  peace,  and  that  man  Chamberlain's  visit  to  Africa, 
you  Imperialists  seem  to  have  got  this  nasty  spirit  all  over 
you.  .  .  .  The  Germans  do  it,  you  say!" 

129 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

My  father  shut  one  eye  and  regarded  the  color  of  his 
port  against  the  waning  light.  "Let  'em,"  he  said.  .  .  . 
"Fancy! — quoting  the  Germans!  When  I  was  a  boy, 
there  weren't  any  Germans.  They  came  up  after  '70. 
Statecraft  from  Germany!  And  statesmen  from  Bir- 
mingham! German  silver  and  Electroplated  Empires. 
.  .  .  No." 

"It's  just  a  part  of  our  narrow  outlook,"  I  answered 
from  the  hearthrug,  after  a  pause.  "It's  because  we're 
so — limited  that  everyone  is  translating  the  greatness 
of  empire  into  preferential  trading  and  jealousy  of  Ger- 
many. It's  for  something  bigger  than  that  that  I've 
returned." 

"Those  big  things  come  slowly,"  said  my  father.  And 
then  with  a  sigh:  "  Age  after  age.  They  seem  at  times — 
to  be  standing  still.  Good  things  go  with  the  bad; 
bad  things  come  with  the  good.  ..." 

I  remember  him  saying  that  as  though  I  could  still  hear 
him. 

It  must  have  been  after  dinner,  for  he  was  sitting, 
duskily  indistinct,  against  the  light,  with  a  voice  coming 
out  to  him.  The  candles  had  not  been  brought  in,  and 
the  view  one  saw  through  the  big  plate  glass  window 
behind  him  was  very  clear  and  splendid.  Those  little 
Wealden  hills  in  Surrey  and  Sussex  assume  at  times,  for 
all  that  by  Swiss  standards  they  are  the  merest  ridges  of 
earth,  the  dignity  and  mystery  of  great  mountains. 
Now,  the  crests  of  Hindhead  and  Blackdown,  purple 
black  against  the  level  gold  of  the  evening  sky,  might 
have  been  some  high-flung  boundary  chain.  Nearer  there 
gathered  banks  and  pools  of  luminous  lavender-tinted 
mist  out  of  which  hills  of  pinewood  rose  like  islands  out  of 

130 


WAR 

the  sea.  The  intervening  spaces  were  magnified  to  con- 
tinental dimensions.  And  the  closer  lowlier  things  over 
which  we  looked,  the  cottages  below  us,  were  grey  and 
black  and  dim,  pierced  by  a  few  luminous  orange  windows 
and  with  a  solitary  street  lamp  shining  like  a  star;  the 
village  might  have  been  nestling  a  mountain's  height 
below  instead  of  a  couple  of  hundred  feet. 

I  left  my  hearthrug,  and  walked  to  the  window  to 
survey  this. 

" Who's  got  all  that  land  stretching  away  there;  that 
little  blunted  sierra  of  pines  and  escarpments  I  mean?" 

My  father  halted  for  an  instant  in  his  answer,  and 
glanced  over  his  shoulder. 

"Wardingham  and  Baxter  share  all  those  coppices, " 
he  remarked.  "They  come  up  to  my  corner  on  each 
side." 

"But  the  dark  heather  and  pine  land  beyond.  With 
just  the  gables  of  a  house  among  the  trees." 

"Oh?  that''  he  said  with  a  careful  note  of  indifference. 
"That's — Justin.  You  know  Justin.  He  used  to  come 
to  Burnmore  Park." 


CHAPTER   THE   SIXTH 
LADY  MARY  JUSTIN 


I  DID  not  see  Lady  Mary  Justin  for  nearly  seven 
months  after  my  return  to  England.  Of  course  I 
had  known  that  a  meeting  was  inevitable,  and  I  had  taken 
that  very  carefully  into  consideration  before  I  decided 
to  leave  South  Africa.  But  many  things  had  happened 
to  me  during  those  crowded  years,  so  that  it  seemed 
possible  that  that  former  magic  would  no  longer  sway 
and  distress  me.  Not  only  had  new  imaginative  interests 
taken  hold  of  me  but — I  had  parted  from  adolescence.  I 
was  a  man.  I  had  been  through  a  great  war,  seen  death 
abundantly,  seen  hardship  and  passion,  and  known  hunger 
and  shame  and  desire.  A  hundred  disillusioning  reve- 
lations of  the  quality  of  life  had  come  to  me;  once  for 
example  when  we  were  taking  some  people  to  the  con- 
centration camps  it  had  been  necessary  to  assist  at  the 
premature  birth  of  a  child  by  the  wayside,  a  startlingly 
gory  and  agonizing  business  for  a  young  man  to  deal  with. 
Heavens!  how  it  shocked  me!  I  could  give  a  score  of 
such  grim  pictures — and  queer  pictures.  .  .  . 

And  it  wasn't  only  the  earthlier  aspects  of  the  life 
about  me  but  also  of  the  life  within  me  that  I  had  been 

132 


LADY    MARY   JUSTIN 

discovering.  The  first  wonder  and  innocence,  the  worship- 
ping, dawn-clear  passion  of  youth,  had  gone  out  of  me 
for  ever.  .  .  . 

§2 

We  met  at  a  dinner.  It  was  at  a  house  the  Tarvrilles 
had  taken  for  the  season  in  Mayfair.  The  drawing- 
room  was  a  big  white  square  apartment  with  several  big 
pictures  and  a  pane  of  plate  glass  above  the  fireplace 
in  the  position  in  which  one  usually  finds  a  mirror;  this 
showed  another  room  beyond,  containing  an  exceptionally 
large,  gloriously  colored  portrait  in  pastel — larger  than 
I  had  ever  thought  pastels  could  be.  Except  for  the 
pictures  both  rooms  were  almost  colorless.  It  was  a 
brilliant  dinner,  with  a  predominating  note  of  ruby;  three 
of  the  women  wore  ruby  velvet;  and  Ellersley  was  present 
just  back  from  Arabia,  and  Ethel  Manton,  Lady  Hendon 
and  the  Duchess  of  Clynes.  I  was  greeted  by  Lady 
Tarvrille,  spoke  to  Ellersley  and  Lady  Hendon,  and  then 
discovered  a  lady  in  a  dress  of  blue  and  pearls  standing 
quite  still  under  a  picture  in  the  opposite  corner  of  the 
room  and  regarding  me  attentively.  It  was  Mary.  Some 
man  was  beside  her,  a  tall  grey  man  with  a  broad  crimson 
ribbon,  and  I  think  he  must  have  spoken  of  me  to  her.  It 
was  as  if  she  had  just  turned  to  look  at  me. 

Constantly  during  those  intervening  months  I  had  been 
thinking  of  meeting  her.  None  the  less  there  was  a  shock, 
not  so  much  of  surprise  as  of  deferred  anticipation. 
There  she  stood  like  something  amazingly  forgotten  that 
was  now  amazingly  recalled.  She  struck  me  in  that 
brief  crowded  instant  of  recognition  as  being  exactly 

133 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

the  person  she  had  been  when  we  had  made  love  in 
Burnmore  Park;  there  were  her  eyes,  at  once  frank  and 
sidelong,  the  old  familiar  sweep  of  her  hair,  the  old 
familiar  tilt  of  the  chin,  the  faint  humor  of  her  lip,  and 
at  the  same  time  she  seemed  to  be  something  altogether 
different  from  the  memories  I  had  cherished,  she  was 
something  graver,  something  inherently  more  splendid 
than  they  had  recorded.  Her  face  lit  now  with  recogni- 
tion. 

I  went  across  to  her  at  once,  with  some  dull  obviousness 
upon  my  lips. 

"And  so  you  are  back  from  Africa  at  last,"  she  said, 
still  unsmiling.  "I  saw  about  you  in  the  papers.  .  .  . 
You  had  a  good  time." 

"I  had  great  good  luck,"  I  replied. 

"I  never  dreamt  when  we  were  boy  and  girl  together 
that  you  would  make  a  soldier." 

I  think  I  said  that  luck  made  soldiers. 

Then  I  think  we  found  a  difficulty  in  going  on  with 
our  talk,  and  began  a  dull  little  argument  that  would 
have  been  stupidly  egotistical  on  my  part  if  it  hadn't 
been  so  obviously  merely  clumsy,  about  luck  making 
soldiers  or  only  finding  them  out.  I  saw  that  she  had 
not  intended  to  convey  any  doubt  of  my  military  capacity 
but  only  of  that  natural  insensitiveness  which  is  supposed 
to  be  needed  in  a  soldier.  But  our  minds  were  remote 
from  the  words  upon  our  lips.  We  were  like  aphasiacs 
who  say  one  thing  while  they  intend  something  altogether 
different.  The  impulse  that  had  brought  me  across  to 
her  had  brought  me  up  to  a  wall  of  impossible  utterances. 
It  was  with  a  real  quality  of  rescue  that  our  hostess  came 
between  us  to  tell  us  our  partners  at  the  dinner-table,  and 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

to  introduce  me  to  mine.  "  You  shall  have  him  again  on 
your  other  side,"  she  said  to  Lady  Mary  with  a  charming 
smile  for  me,  treating  me  as  if  I  was  a  lion  in  request 
instead  of  the  mere  outsider  I  was. 

We  talked  very  little  at  dinner.  Both  of  us  I  think 
were  quite  unequal  to  the  occasion.  Whatever  meetings, 
we  had  imagined,  certainly  neither  of  us  had  thought 
of  this  very  possible  encounter,  a  long  disconcerting 
hour  side  by  side.  I  began  to  remember  old  happenings 
with  an  astonishing  vividness ;  there  within  six  inches  of 
me  was  the  hand  I  had  kissed;  her  voice  was  the  same  to 
its  lightest  shade,  her  hair  flowed  off  her  forehead  with 
the  same  amazingly  familiar  wave.  Was  she  too  remem- 
bering? But  I  perhaps  had  changed  altogether.  .  .  . 

"  Why  did  you  go  away  as  you  did?"  she  asked  abruptly, 
when  for  a  moment  we  were  isolated  conversationally. 
"Why  did  you  never  write?" 

She  had  still  that  phantom  lisp. 

"What  else  could  I  do?" 

She  turned  away  from  me  and  answered  the  man  on  her 
left,  who  had  just  addressed  her.  .  .  . 

When  the  mid-dinner  change  came  we  talked  a  little 
about  indifferent  things,  making  a  stiff  conversation  like  a 
bridge  over  a  torrent  of  unspoken  intimacies.  We  dis- 
cussed something;  I  think  Lady  Tarvrille's  flowers  and  the 
Cape  Flora  and  gardens.  She  told  me  she  had  a  Japanese 
garden  with  three  Japanese  gardeners.  They  were  won- 
derful little  men  to  watch.  "Humming-bird  gardeners," 
she  called  them.  "They  wear  their  native  costume." 

"We  are  your  neighbors  in  Surrey,"  she  said,  going 
off  abruptly  from  that.  "We  are  quite  near  to  your 
father." 

135 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

She  paused  with  that  characteristic  effect  of  delibera- 
tion in  her  closed  lips.  Then  she  added:  "I  can  see 
the  trees  behind  your  father's  house  from  the  window 
of  my  room." 

"Yes,"  I  said.  '  You  take  all  our  southward  skyline." 
%  She  turned  her  face  to  me  with  the  manner  of  a  great 
lady  adding  a  new  acquaintance  to  her  collection.  But 
her  eyes  met  mine  very  steadily  and  intimately.  "Mr. 
Stratton,"  she  said — it  was  the  first  time  in  her  life  she 
had  called  me  that — "when  we  come  back  to  Surrey  I 
want  you  to  come  and  see  me  and  tell  me  of  all  the  things 
you  are  going  to  do.  Will  you?" 


§3 

That  meeting,  that  revival,  must  have  been  late  in 
November  or  early  in  December.  Already  by  that  time 
I  had  met  your  mother.  I  write  to  you,  little  son,  not 
to  you  as  you  are  now,  but  to  the  man  you  are  someday 
to  be.  I  write  to  understand  myself,  and,  so  far  as  I  can 
understand,  to  make  you  understand.  So  that  I  want 
you  to  go  back  with  me  for  a  time  into  the  days  before 
your  birth,  to  think  not  of  that  dear  spirit  of  love  who 
broods  over  you  three  children,  that  wise,  sure  mother  who 
rules  your  life,  but  of  a  young  and  slender  girl,  Rachel 
More,  younger  then  than  you  will  be  when  at  last  this 
story  comes  into  your  hands.  For  unless  you  think  of  her 
as  being  a  girl,  if  you  let  your  present  knowledge  of  her 
fill  out  this  part  in  our  story,  you  will  fail  to  understand 
the  proportions  of  these  two  in  my  life.  So  I  shall  write 
of  her  here  as  Rachel  More,  as  if  she  were  someone  as 

136 


LADY    MARY   JUSTIN 

completely  dissociated  from  yourself  as  Lady  Mary; 
as  if  she  were  someone  in  the  story  of  my  life  who  had  as 
little  to  do  with  yours. 

I  had  met  her  in  September.  The  house  my  father 
lived  in  is  about  twelve  miles  away  from  your  mother's 
home  at  Ridinghanger,  and  I  was  taken  over  by  P 
Restall  in  his  motor-car.  Restall  had  just  become  a 
convert  to  this  new  mode  of  locomotion,  and  he  was  very 
active  with  a  huge,  malignant-looking  French  car  that 
opened  behind,  and  had  a  kind  of  poke  bonnet  and  all 
sorts  of  features  that  have  since  disappeared  from  the 
automobile  world.  He  took  everyone  that  he  could  lay 
hands  upon  for  rides, — he  called  it  extending  their  range, 
and  he  called  upon  everyone  else  to  show  off  the  car; 
he  was  responsible  for  more  introduction  and  social  ad- 
mixture in  that  part  of  Surrey  than  had  occurred  during 
the  previous  century.  We  punctured  in  the  Ridinghanger 
drive,  Restall  did  his  own  repairs,  and  so  it  was  we  stayed 
for  nearly  four  hours  and  instead  of  a  mere  caller  I  became 
a  familiar  friend  of  the  family. 

Your  mother  then  was  still  not  eighteen,  a  soft  white 
slip  of  being,  tall,  slender,  brown-haired  and  silent,  with 
very  still  deep  dark  eyes.  She  and  your  three  aunts 
formed  a  very  gracious  group  of  young  women  indeed; 
Alice  then  as  now  the  most  assertive,  with  a  gay  initiative 
and  a  fluent  tongue;  Molly  already  a  sun-brown  gipsy, 
and  Norah  still  a  pig-tailed  thing  of  lank  legs  and  wild 
embraces  and  the  pinkest  of  swift  pink  blushes;  your 
uncle  Sidney,  with  his  shy  lank  moodiness,  acted  the 
brotherly  part  of  a  foil.  There  were  several  stray  visitors, 
young  men  and  maidens,  there  were  always  stray  visitors 
irt  those  days  at  Ridinghanger,  and  your  grandmother, 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

rosy  and  bright-eyed,  maintained  a  gentle  flow  of  creature 
comforts  and  kindly  but  humorous  observations.  I  do  not 
remember  your  grandfather  on  this  occasion;  probably  he 
wasn't  there. 

There  was  tea,  and  we  played  tennis  and  walked  about 
occasionally  visited  Restall,  who  was  getting  dirtier 
and  dirtier,  and  crosser  and  crosser  at  his  repairs,  and 
spreading  a  continually  more  remarkable  assemblage  of 
parts  and  instruments  over  the  grass  about  him.  He 
looked  at  last  more  like  a  pitch  in  the  Caledonian  market 
than  a  decent  country  gentleman  paying  an  afternoon  call. 
And  then  back  to  more  tennis  and  more  talk.  We  fell 
into  a  discussion  of  Tariff  Reform  as  we  sat  taking  tea. 
Two  of  the  visitor  youths  were  strongly  infected  by  the 
new  teachings  which  were  overshadowing  the  outlook  of 
British  Imperialism.  Some  mean  phrase  about  not  con- 
quering Africa  for  the  German  bagman,  some  ugly  turn 
of  thought  that  at  a  touch  brought  down  Empire  to  the 
level  of  a  tradesman's  advantage,  fell  from  one  of  them, 
and  stirred  me  to  sudden  indignation.  I  began  to  talk 
of  things  that  had  been  gathering  in  my  mind  for  some 
time. 

I  do  not  know  what  I  said.  It  was  in  the  vein  of 
my  father's  talk  no  doubt.  But  I  think  that  for  once  I 
may  have  been  eloquent.  And  in  the  midst  of  my  de- 
mand for  ideals  in  politics  that  were  wider  and  deeper 
than  artful  buying  and  selling,  that  looked  beyond  a  vulgar 
aggression  and  a  churl's  dread  and  hatred  of  foreign 
things,  while  I  struggled  to  say  how  great  and  noble 
a  thing  empire  might  be,  I  saw  Rachel's  face.  This,  it 
was  manifest,  was  a  new  kind  of  talk  to  her.  Her  dark 
eyes  were  alight  with  a  beautiful  enthusiasm  for  what  I 

138 


LADY    MARY   JUSTIN 

was  trying  to  say,  and  for  what  in  the  light  of  that  glowing 
reception  I  seemed  to  be. 

I  felt  that  queer  shame  one  feels  when  one  is  taken 
suddenly  at  the  full  value  of  one's  utmost  expressions. 
I  felt  as  though  I  had  cheated  her,  was  passing  myself 
off  for  something  as  great  and  splendid  as  the  Empire 
of  my  dreams.  It  is  hard  to  dissociate  oneself  from  the 
fine  things  to  which  one  aspires.  I  stopped  almost 
abruptly.  Dumbly  her  eyes  bade  me  go  on,  but  when  I 
spoke  again  it  was  at  a  lower  level.  .  .  . 

That  look  in  Rachel's  eyes  remained  with  me.  My 
mind  had  flashed  very  rapidly  from  the  realization  of 
its  significance  to  the  thought  that  if  one  could  be  sure 
of  that,  then  indeed  one  could  pitch  oneself  high.  Rachel, 
I  felt,  had  something  for  me  that  I  needed  profoundly, 
without  ever  having  known  before  that  I  needed  it.  She 
had  the  supreme  gifts  of  belief  and  devotion;  in  that 
instant's  gleam  it  seemed  she  held  them  out  to  me. 

Never  before  in  my  life  had  it  seemed  credible  to  me  that 
anyone  could  give  me  that,  or  that  I  could  hope  for  such  a 
gift  of  support  and  sacrifice.  Love  as  I  had  known  it  had 
been  a  community  and  an  alliance,  a  frank  abundant  meet- 
ing; but  this  was  another  kind  of  love  that  shone  for  an 
instant  and  promised,  and  vanished  shyly  out  of  sight  as 
I  and  Rachel  looked  at  one  another. 

Some  interruption  occurred.  Restall  came,  I  think, 
blackened  by  progress,  to  drink  a  cup  of  tea  and  negotiate 
the  loan  of  a  kitchen  skewer.  A  kitchen  skewer  it  ap- 
peared was  all  that  was  needed  to  complete  his  reconstruc- 
tion in  the  avenue.  Norah  darted  off  for  a  kitchen  skewer, 
while  Restall  drank.  And  then  there  was  a  drift  to  tennis, 
and  Rachel  and  I  were  partners.  All  this  time  I  was 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

in  a  state  of  startled  attention  towards  her,  full  of  this 
astounding  impression  that  something  wonderful  and 
unprecedented  had  flowed  out  from  her  towards  my  life, 
full  too  of  doubts  now  whether  that  shining  response  had 
ever  occurred,  whether  some  trick  of  light  and  my  brain 
had  not  deceived  me.  I  wanted  tremendously  to  talk  to 
her,  and  did  not  know  how  to  begin  in  any  serious  fashion. 
Beyond  everything  I  wanted  to  see  again  that  deep  onset 
of  belief.  .  .  . 

"Come  again,"  said  your  grandmother  to  me,  "come 
again!"  after  she  had  tried  in  vain  to  make  Restall  stay 
for  an  informal  supper.  I  was  all  for  staying,  but  Restall 
said  darkly,  "There  are  the  Lamps/' 

"But  they  will  be  all  right,"  said  Mrs.  More. 

"I  can't  trust  'em,"  said  Restall,  with  a  deepening 
gloom.  "Not  after  that"  The  motor-car  looked  self- 
conscious  and  uncomfortable,  but  said  nothing  by  way 
of  excuse,  and  Restall  took  me  off  in  it  like  one  whose 
sun  has  set  for  ever.  "I  wouldn't  be  surprised,"  said 
Restall  as  we  went  down  the  drive,  "if  the  damned 
thing  turned  a  somersault.  It  might  do — anything." 
Those  were  the  brighter  days  of  motoring. 

The  next  time  I  went  over  released  from  Restall's 
limitations,  and  stayed  to  a  jolly  family  supper.  I 
found  remarkably  few  obstacles  in  my  way  to  a  better 
acquaintance  with  Rachel.  You  see  I  was  an  entirely 
eligible  and  desirable  young  man  in  Mrs.  More's  eyes.  .  .  . 


When  I  recall  these  long  past  emotions  again,  I  am 
struck  by  the  profound  essential  difference  between  my 

140 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

feelings  for  your  mother  and  for  Mary.  They  were  so 
different  that  it  seems  scarcely  rational  to  me  that  they 
should  be  called  by  the  same  name.  Yet  each  was  love, 
profoundly  deep  and  sincere.  The  contrast  lies,  I  think, 
in  our  relative  ages,  and  our  relative  maturity;  that 
altered  the  quality  of  all  our  emotions.  The  one  was  the 
love  of  a  man  of  six-and-twenty,  exceptionally  seasoned 
and  experienced  and  responsible  for  his  years,  for  a  girl 
still  at  school,  a  girl  attractively  beautiful,  mysterious  and 
unknown  to  him;  the  other  was  the  love  of  coevals,  who 
had  been  playmates  and  intimate  companions,  and  of 
whom  the  woman  was  certainly  as  capable  and  wilful  as 
the  man. 

Now  it  is  exceptional  for  men  to  love  women  of  their 
own  age,  it  is  the  commoner  thing  that  they  should  love 
maidens  younger  and  often  much  younger  than  them- 
selves. This  is  true  more  particularly  of  our  own  class; 
the  masculine  thirties  and  forties  marry  the  feminine 
twenties,  all  the  prevailing  sentiment  and  usage  between 
the  sexes  rises  naturally  out  of  that.  We  treat  this 
seniority  as  though  it  were  a  virile  characteristic;  we 
treat  the  man  as  though  he  were  a  natural  senior,  we 
expect  a  weakness,  a  timid  deference,  in  the  girl.  I 
and  Mary  had  loved  one  another  as  two  rivers  run  to- 
gether on  the  way  to  the"  sea,  we  had  grown  up  side 
by  side  to  the  moment  when  we  kissed;  but  I  sought  your 
mother,  I  watched  her  and  desired  her  and  chose  her, 
very  tenderly  and  worshipfully  indeed,  to  be  mine.  I 
do  not  remember  that  there  was  any  corresponding  inten- 
tion in  my  mind  to  be  hers.  I  do  not  think  that  that 
idea  came  in  at  all.  She  was  something  to  be  won,  some- 
thing playing  an  inferior  and  retreating  part.  And  I 
10  141 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

was  artificial  in  all  my  attitudes  to  her,  I  thought  of  what 
would  interest  her,  what  would  please  her,  I  knew  from 
the  outset  that  what  she  saw  in  me  to  rouse  that  deep, 
shy  glow  of  exaltation  in  her  face  was.  illusion,  illusion  it 
was  my  business  to  sustain.  And  so  I  won  her,  and  long 
years  had  to  pass,  years  of  secret  loneliness  and  hidden 
feelings,  of  preposterous  pretences  and  covert  perplexities, 
before  we  escaped  from  that  crippling  tradition  of  in- 
equality and  looked  into  one  another's  eyes  with  under- 
standing and  forgiveness,  a  woman  and  a  man. 

I  made  no  great  secret  of  the  interest  and  attraction 
I  found  in  Rachel,  and  the  Mores  made  none  of  their 
entire  approval  of  me.  I  walked  over  on  the  second 
occasion,  and  Ridinghanger  opened  out,  a  great  flower 
of  genial  appreciation  that  I  came  alone,  hiding  nothing 
of  its  dawning  perception  that  it  was  Rachel  in  particular 
I  came  to  see. 

Your  grandmother's  match-making  was  as  honest  as 
the  day.  There  was  the  same  salad  of  family  and  visitors 
as  on  the  former  afternoon,  and  this  time  I  met  Freshman, 
who  was  destined  to  marry  Alice;  there  was  tea,  tennis, 
and,  by  your  grandmother's  suggestion,  a  walk  to  see 
the  sunset  from  the  crest  of  the  hill.  Rachel  and  I  walked 
across  the  breezy  moorland  together,  while  I  talked 
and  tempted  her  to  talk. 

What,  I  wonder,  did  we  talk  about?  English  scenery, 
I  think,  and  African  scenery  and  the  Weald  about  us,  and 
the  long  history  of  the  Weald  and  its  present  and  future, 
and  at  last  even  a  little  of  politics.  I  had  never  explored 
the  mind  of  a  girl  of  seventeen  before;  there  was  a  sur- 
prise in  all  she  knew  and  a  delight  in  all  she  didn't  know, 
and  about  herself  a  candor,  a  fresh  simplicity  of  outlook 

142 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

that  was  sweeter  than  the  clear  air  about  us,  sweeter  than 
sunshine  or  the  rising  song  of  a  lark.  She  believed  so  gal- 
lantly and  beautifully,  she  was  so  perfectly,  unaffectedly 
and  certainly  prepared  to  be  a  brave  and  noble  person — if 
only  life  would  let  her.  And  she  hadn't  as  yet  any  sus- 
picion that  life  might  make  that  difficult.  .  .  . 

I  went  to  Ridinghanger  a  number  of  times  in  the 
spring  and  early  summer.  I  talked  a  great  deal  with 
Rachel,  and  still  I  did  not  make  love  to  her.  It  was 
always  in  my  mind  that  I  would  make  love  to  her,  the 
heavens  and  earth  and  all  her  family  were  propitious, 
glowing  golden  with  consent  and  approval,  I  thought  she 
was  the  most  wonderful  and  beautiful  thing  in  life,  and 
her  eyes,  the  intonation  of  her  voice,  her  hurrying  color 
and  a  hundred  little  involuntary  signs  'told  me  how  she 
quickened  at  my  coming.  But  there  was  a  shyness.  I 
loved  her  as  one  loves  and  admires  a  white  flower  or  a 
beautiful  child — some  stranger's  child.  I  felt  that  I 
might  make  her  afraid  of  me.  I  had  never  before  thought 
that  to  make  love  is  a  coarse  thing.  But  still  at  high 
summer  when  I  met  Mary  again  no  definite  thing  had  been 
said  between  myself  and  Rachel.  But  we  knew,  each  of 
us  knew,  that  somewhere  in  a  world  less  palpable,  in  fairy- 
land, in  dreamland,  we  had  met  and  made  our  vows. 


§5 

You  see  bjw  far  my  imagination  had  gone  towards 
readjustment  when  Mary  returned  into  my  life.  You 
see  how  strange  and  distant  it  was  to  meet  her  again, 
changed  cc  mpletely  into  the  great  lady  she  had  intended 

143 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

to  be,  speaking  to  me  with  the  restrained  and  practised 
charm  of  a  woman  who  is  young  and  beautiful  and 
prominent  and  powerful  and  secure.  There  was  no  imme- 
diate sense  of  shock  in  that  resumption  of  our  broken 
intercourse,  it  seemed  to  me  that  night  simply  that 
something  odd  and  curious  had  occurred.  I  do  not 
remember  how  we  parted  that  evening  or  whether  we 
even  saw  each  other  after  dinner  was  over,  but  from  that 
hour  forth  Mary  by  insensible  degrees  resumed  her  old 
predominance  in  my  mind.  I  woke  up  in  the  night  and 
thought  about  her,  and  next  day  I  found  myself  thinking 
of  her,  remembering  things  out  of  the  past  and  recalling 
and  examining  every  detail  of  the  overnight  encounter. 
How  cold  and  ineffective  we  had  been,  both  of  us !  We 
had  been  like  people  resuming  a  disused  and  partially  for- 
gotten language.  Had  she  changed  towards  me  ?  Did  she 
indeed  want  to  see  me  again  or  was  that  invitation  a  mere 
demonstration  of  how  entirely  unimportant  seeing  me  or 
not  seeing  me  had  become? 

Then  I  would  find  myself  thinking  with  the  utmost 
particularity  of  her  face.  Had  it  changed  at  all?  Was 
it  altogether  changed?  I  seemed  to  have  forgotten 
everything  and  remembered  everything;  that  peculiar 
slight  thickness  of  her  eyelids  that  gave  her  eyes  their 
tenderness,  that  light  firmness  of  her  lips.  Of  course  she 
would  want  to  talk  to  me,  as  now  I  perceived  I  wanted 
to  talk  to  her 

Was  I  in  love  with  her  still?  It  seemed  to  me  then 
that  I  was  not.  It  had  not  been  that  hesitating  fierce- 
ness, that  pride  and  demand  and  doubt,  whicrAis  passionate 
love,  that  had  made  all  my  sensations  strange  to  me  as  I 
sat  beside  her.  It  had  been  something  large^  and  finer, 

144 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN* 

something  great  and  embracing,  a  return  to  fellowship. 
Here  beside  me,  veiled  from  me  only  by  our  transient  em- 
barrassment and  the  tarnish  of  separation  and  silences,  was 
the  one  person  who  had  ever  broken  down  the  crust  of 
shy  insincerity  which  is  so  incurably  my  characteristic 
and  talked  intimately  of  the  inmost  things  of  life  to  me. 
I  discovered  now  for  the  first  time  how  intense  had  been 
my  loneliness  for  the  past  five  years.  I  discovered  now 
that  through  all  those  years  I  had  been  hungry  for  such 
talk  as  Mary  alone  could  give  me.  My  mind  was  filled 
with  talk,  filled  with  things  I  desired  to  say  to  her;  that 
chaos  began  to  take  on  a  multitudinous  expression  at  the 
touch  of  her  spirit.  I  began  to  imagine  conversations 
with  her,  to  prepare  reports  for  her  of  those  new  worlds  of 
sensation  and  activity  I  had  discovered  since  that  boyish 
parting. 

But  when  at  last  that  talk  came  it  was  altogether 
different  from  any  of  those  I  had  invented. 

She  wrote  to  me  when  she  came  down  into  Surrey 
and  I  walked  over  to  Martens  the  next  afternoon.  I 
found  her  in  her  own  sitting-room,  a  beautiful  charac- 
teristic apartment  with  tall  French  windows  hung  with 
blue  curtains,  a  large  writing-desk  and  a  great  litter  of 
books.  The  room  gave  upon  a  broad  sunlit  terrace 
with  a  balustrading  of  yellowish  stone,  on  which  there 
stood  great  oleanders.  Beyond  was  a  flower  garden  and 
then  the  dark  shadows  of  cypresses.  She  was  standing 
as  I  came  in  to  her,  as  though  she  had  seen  me  coming 
across  the  lawns  and  had  been  awaiting  my  entrance. 
"I  thought  you  might  come  to-day,"  she  said,  and  told 
the  manservant  to  deny  her  to  other  callers.  Again  she 
produced  that  queer  effect  of  being  at  once  altogether  the 

145 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

same  and  altogether  different  from  the  Mary  I  had  known. 
" Justin, "  she  said,  "is  in  Paris.  He  comes  back  on 
Friday."  I  saw  then  that  the  change  lay  in  her  bearing, 
that  for  the  easy  confidence  of  the  girl  she  had  now  the 
deliberate  dignity  and  control  of  a  married  woman — a  very 
splendidly  and  spaciously  married  woman.  Her  manner 
had  been  purged  of  impulse.  Since  we  had  met  she 
had  stood,  the  mistress  of  great  houses,  and  had  dealt 
with  thousands  of  people. 

"You  walked  over  to  me?" 

"I  walked,"  I  said.  "It  is  nearly  a  straight  path. 
You  know  it?" 

"You  came  over  the  heather  beyond  our  pine  wood," 
she  confirmed.  And  then  I  think  we  talked  some  polite 
unrealities  about  Surrey  scenery  and  the  weather.  It  was 
so  formal  that  by  a  common  impulse  we  let  the  topic 
suddenly  die.  We  stood  through  a  pause,  a  hesitation. 
Were  we  indeed  to  go  on  at  that  altitude  of  cold  civility? 
She  turned  to  the  window  as  if  the  view  was  to  serve 
again. 

"Sit  down,"  she  said  and  dropped  into  a  chair  against 
the  light,  looking  away  from  me  across  the  wide  green 
space  of  afternoon  sunshine.  I  sat  down  on  a  little  sofa, 
at  a  loss  also. 

"And  so,"  she  said,-  turning  her  face  to  me  suddenly, 
"you  come  back  into  my  life."  And  I  was  amazed  to 
see  that  the  brightness  of  her  eyes  was  tears.  "We've 
lived — five  years." 

"You,"  I  said  clumsily,  "have  done  all  sorts  of  things. 
I  hear  of  you — patronizing  young  artists — organizing 
experiments  in  village  education." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "I've  done  all  sorts  of  things.  One 
146 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

has  to.  Forced,  unreal  things  for  the  most  part.  You 
I  expect  have  done — all  sorts  of  things  also.  .  .  .  But 
yours  have  been  real  things.  .  .  ." 

"All  things/'  I  remarked  sententiously,  "are  real. 
And  all  of  them  a  little  unreal.  South  Africa  has  been 
wonderful.  And  now  it  is  all  over  one  doubts  if  it  really 
happened.  Like  that  incredulous  mood  after  a  storm 
of  passion. " 

"You've  come  back  for  good?" 

"For  good.     I  want  to  do  things  in  England." 

"Politics?" 

"If  I  can  get  into  that." 

Again  a  pause.  There  came  the  characteristic  moment 
of  deliberation  that  I  remembered  so  well. 

"I  never  meant  you,"  she  said,  "to  go  away.  .  .  . 
You  could  have  written.  You  never  answered  the  notes 
I  sent." 

"I  was  frantic,"  I  said,  "with  loss  and  jealousy.  I 
wanted  to  forget." 

"And  you  forgot?" 

"I  did  my  best." 

"I  did  my  best,"  said  Mary.    "And  now Have 

you  forgotten?" 

"Nothing." 

"Nor  I.  I  thought  I  had.  Until  I  saw  you  again. 
I've  thought  of  you  endlessly.  I've  wanted  to  talk  to 
you.  We  had  a  way  of  talking  together.  But  you  went 
away.  You  turned  your  back  as  though  all  that  was 
nothing — not  worth  having.  You — you  drove  home  my 
marriage,  Stephen.  You  made  me  know  what  a  thing  of 
sex  a  woman  is  to  a  man — and  how  little  else.  ..." 

She  paused. 

147 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

"You  see,"  I  said  slowly.  "You  had  made  me,  as 
people  say,  in  love  with  you.  ...  I  don't  know— if  you 
remember  everything.  .  .  ." 

She  looked  me  in  the  eyes  for  a  moment. 

"I  hadn't  been  fair,"  she  said  with  an  abrupt  abandon- 
ment of  accusation.  "But  you  know,  Stephen,  that 

night I  meant  to  explain.  And  afterwards.  .  .  . 

Things  sometimes  go  as  one  hasn't  expected  them  to  go, 
even  the  things  one  has  planned  to  say.  I  suppose — I 
treated  you— disgustingly." 

I  protested. 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "I  treated  you  as  I  did — and  I 
thought  you  would  stand  it.  I  knew,  I  knew  then  as 
well  as  you  do  now  that  male  to  my  female  you  wouldn't 
stand  it,  but  somehow — I  thought  there  were  other  things. 
Things  that  could  override  that.  ..." 

"Not,"  I  said,  "for  a  boy  of  one-and-twenty." 

"But  in  a  man  of  twenty-six?" 

I  weighed  the  question.  "Things  are  different,"  I 
said,  and  then,  "Yes.  Anyhow  now — if  I  may  come 
back  penitent, — to  a  friendship." 

We  looked  at  one  another  gravely.  Faintly  in  our 
ears  sounded  the  music  of  past  and  distant  things.  We 
pretended  to  hear  nothing  of  that,  tried  honestly  to  hear 
nothing  of  it.  I  had  not  remembered  how  steadfast  and 
quiet  her  face  could  be.  "Yes,"  she  said,  "a  friendship." 

"I've  always  had  you  in  my  mind,  Stephen,"  she  said. 
"When  I  saw  I  couldn't  marry  you,  it  seemed  to  me  I  had 
better  marry  and  be  free  of  any  further  hope.  I  thought 
we  could  get  over  that.  'Let's  get  it  over,'  I  thought. 
Now — at  any  rate — we  have  got  over  that."  Her  eyes 
verified  her  words  a  little  doubtfully.  "And  we  can  talk 

148 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

and  you  can  tell  me  of  your  life,  and  the  things  you  want 
to  do  that  make  life  worth  living.  Oh!  life  has  been 
stupid  without  you,  Stephen,  large  and  expensive  and  aim- 
less. .  .  .  Tell  me  of  your  politics.  They  say — Justin 
told  me — you  think  of  parliament?" 

"I  want  to  do  that.     I  have  been  thinking In 

fact  I  am  going  to  stand."  I  found  myself  hesitating  on 
the  verge  of  phrases  in  the  quality  of  a  review  article. 
It  was  too  unreal  for  her  presence.  And  yet  it  was  this 
she  seemed  to  want  from  me.  "This,"  I  said,  "is  a 
phase  of  great  opportunities.  The  war  has  stirred  the 
Empire  to  a  sense  of  itself,  to  a  sense  of  what  it  might  be. 
Of  course  this  Tariff  Reform  row  is  a  squalid  nuisance; 
it  may  kill  out  all  the  fine  spirit  again  before  anything  is 
done.  Everything  will  become  a  haggle,  a  chaffering  of 
figures.  .  .  .  All  the  more  reason  why  we  should  try  and 
save  things  from  the  commercial  traveller.  If  the  Empire 
is  anything  at  all,  it  is  something  infinitely  more  than  a 
combination  in  restraint  of  trade.  ..." 

"Yes,"  she  said.     "And  you  want  to  take  that  line. 
The  high  line." 

"If  one  does  not  take  the  high  line,"  I  said,  "what  does 
one  go  into  politics  for?" 

"Stephen,"  she  smiled,  "you  haven't  lost  a  sort  of 

simplicity People  go  into  politics  because  it  looks 

important,  because  other  people  go  into  politics,  because 
they  can  get  titles  and  a  sense  of  influence  and — other 
things.  And  then  there  are  quarrels,  old  grudges  to  serve." 

"These  are  roughnesses  of  the  surface." 

"Old  Stephen!"  she  cried  with  the  note  of  a  mother. 
"They  will  worry  you  in  politics." 

I  laughed,     "Perhaps  I'm  not  altogether  so  simple," 
149 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

"  Oh !  you'll  get  through.  You  have  a  way  of  going  on. 
But  I  shall  have  to  watch  over  you.  I  see  I  shall  have  to 
watch  over  you.  Tell  me  of  the  things  you  mean  to  do. 
Where  are  you  standing?" 

I  began  to  tell  her  a  little  disjointedly  of  the  probabil- 
ities of  my  Yorkshire  constituency.  .  .  . 


§6 

I  have  a  vivid  vignette  in  my  memory  of  my  return 
to  my  father's  house,  down  through  the  pine  woods  and 
by  the  winding  path  across  the  deep  valley  that  sepa- 
rated our  two  ridges.  I  was  thinking  of  Mary  and 
nothing  but  Mary  in  all  the  world  and  of  the  friendly 
sweetness  of  her  eyes  and  the  clean  strong  sharpness  of 
her  voice.  That  sweet  white  figure  of  Rachel  that  had 
been  creeping  to  an  ascendancy  in  my  imagination  was 
moonlight  to  her  sunrise.  I  knew  it  was  Mary  I  loved 
and  had  always  loved.  I  wanted  passionately  to  be  as 
she  desired,  the  friend  she  demanded,  that  intimate 
brother  and  confederate,  but  all  my  heart  cried  out  for 
her,  cried  out  for  her  altogether. 

I  would  be  her  friend,  I  repeated  to  myself,  I  would 
be  her  friend.  I  would  talk  to  her  often,  plan  with  her, 
work  with  her.  I  could  put  my  meanings  into  her  life 
and  she  should  throw  her  beauty  over  mine.  I  began 
already  to  dream  of  the  talk  of  to-morrow's  meeting.  .  .  . 

§7 

And  now  let  me  go  on  to  tell  at  once  the  thing  that 
changed  life  for  both  of  us  altogether,  that  turned  us 

150 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

out  of  the  courses  that  seemed  set  for  us,  our  spacious, 
successful  and  divergent  ways,  she  to  the  tragedy  of  her 
death  and  I  from  all  the  prospects  of  the  public  career 
that  lay  before  me  to  the  work  that  now,  toilsomely, 
inadequately  and  blunderingly  enough,  I  do.  It  was  to 
pierce  and  slash  away  the  appearances  of  life  for  me,  it 
was  to  open  my  way  to  infinite  disillusionment,  and 
unsuspected  truths.  Within  a  few  weeks  of  our  second 
meeting  Mary  and  I  were  passionately  in  love  with  one 
another;  we  had  indeed  become  lovers.  The  arrested 
attractions  of  our  former  love  released  again,  drew  us 
inevitably  to  that.  We  tried  to  seem  outwardly  only 
friends,  with  this  hot  glow  between  us.  Our  tormented 
secret  was  half  discovered  and  half  betrayed  itself. 
There  followed  a  tragi-comedy  of  hesitations  and  dis- 
united struggle.  Within  four  months  the  crisis  of  our 
two  lives  was  past.  .  .  . 

It  is  not  within  my  purpose  to  tell  you,  my  son,  of  the 
particular  events,  the  particular  comings  and  goings, 
the  chance  words,  the  chance  meetings,  the  fatal  mo- 
mentary misunderstandings  that  occurred  between  us. 
I  want  to  tell  of  something  more  general  than  that. 
This  misadventure  is  in  our  strain.  It  is  our  inheritance. 
It  is  a  possibility  in  the  inheritance  of  all  honest  and 
emotional  men  and  women.  There  are  no  doubt  people 
altogether  cynical  and  adventurous  to  whom  these  pas- 
sions and  desires  are  at  once  controllable  and  permissible 
indulgences  without  any  radiation  of  consequences,  a 
secret  and  detachable  part  of  life,  and  there  may  be 
people  of  convictions  so  strong  and  simple  that  these  dis- 
turbances are  eliminated,  but  we  Strattons  are  of  a  quality 
neither  so  low  nor  so  high,  we  stoop  and  rise,  we  are  not 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

convinced  about  our  standards,  and  for  many  generations 
to  come,  with  us  and  with  such  people  as  the  Christians, 
and  indeed  with  most  of  our  sort  of  people,  we  shall 
be  equally  desirous  of  free  and  intimate  friendship  and 
prone  to  blaze  into  passion  and  disaster  at  that  proximity. 
This  is  one  of  the  essential  riddles  in  the  adaptation 
of  such  human  beings  as  ourselves  to  that  greater  civilized 
state  of  which  I  dream.  It  is  the  gist  of  my  story.  It 
/is  one  of  the  two  essential  riddles  that  confront  our  kind. 
The  servitude  of  sex  and  the  servitude  of  labor  are  the 
twin  conditions  upon  which  human  society  rests  to-day, 
the  two  limitations  upon  its  progress  towards  a  greater 
social  order,  to  that  greater  community,  those  uplands 
of  light  and  happy  freedom,  towards  which  that  Being 
who  was  my  father  yesterday,  who  thinks  in  myself 
to-day,  and  who  will  be  you  to-morrow  and  your  sons 
after  you,  by  his  very  nature  urges  and  must  continue  to 
urge  the  life  of  mankind.  The  story  of  myself  and  Mary 
is  a  mere  incident  in  that  gigantic,  scarce  conscious  effort 
to  get  clear  of  toils  and  confusions  and  encumbrances,  and 
have  our  way  with  life.  We  are  like  little  figures,  dots 
ascendant  upon  a  vast  hillside;  I  take  up  our  intimacy 
for  an  instant  and  hold  it  tinder  a  lens  for  you.  I  become 
more  than  myself  then,  and  Mary  stands  for  innumerable 
women.  It  happened  yesterday,  and  it  is  just  a  part  of 
that  same  history  that  made  Edmond  Stratton  of  the 
Hays  elope  with  Charlotte  Anstruther  and  get  himself  run 
through  the  body  at  Haddington  two  hundred  years  ago, 
which  drove  the  Laidlaw-Christians  to  Virginia  in  '45, 
gave  Stratton  Street  to  the  moneylenders  when  George  IV. 
was  Regent,  and  broke  the  heart  of  Margaret  Stratton 
in  the  days  when  Charles  the  First  was  king.  With 

152 


LADY    MARY   JUSTIN 

our  individual  variations  and  under  changed  conditions 
the  old  desires  and  impulses  stirred  us,  the  old  antagonisms 
confronted  us,  the  old  difficulties  and  sloughs  and  impas- 
sable places  baffled  us.  There  are  times  when  I  think 
of  my  history  among  all  those  widespread  repeated  his- 
tories, until  it  seems  to  me  that  the  human  Lover  is  like 
a  creature  who  struggles  for  ever  through  a  thicket  with- 
out an  end.  .  .  . 

There  are  no  universal  laws  of  affection  and  desire, 
but  it  is  manifestly  true  that  for  the  most  of  us  free 
talk,  intimate  association,  and  any  real  fellowship  between 
men  and  women  turns  with  an  extreme  readiness  to  love. 
And  that  being  so  it  follows  that  under  existing  conditions 
the  unrestricted  meeting  and  companionship  of  men  and 
women  in  society  is  a  monstrous  sham,  a  merely  dangerous 
pretence  of  encounters.  The  safe  reality  beneath  those 
liberal  appearances  is  that  a  woman  must  be  content  with 
the  easy  friendship  of  other  women  and  of  one  man  only, 
letting  a  superficial  friendship  towards  all  other  men  veil 
impassable  abysses  of  separation,  and  a  man  must  in  the 
same  way  have  one  sole  woman  intimate.  To  all  other 
women  he  must  be  a  little  blind,  a  little  deaf,  politely  in- 
attentive. He  must  respect  the  transparent,  intangible, 
tacit  purdah  about  them,  respect  it  but  never  allude  to  it. 
To  me  that  is  an  intolerable  state  of  affairs,  but  it  is  reality. 
If  you  live  in  the  spirit  of  any  other  understanding  you 
will  court  social  disaster.  I  suppose  it  is  a  particularly 
intolerable  state  of  affairs  to  us  Strattons  because  it  is 
in  our  nature  to  want  things  to  seem  what  they  are. 
That  translucent  yet  impassible  purdah  outrages  our 
veracity.  And  it  is  plain  to  me  that  our  social  order 
cannot  stand  and  is  not  standing  the  tensions  it  creates. 

153 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

The  convention  that  passions  and  emotions  are  absent 
when  they  are  palpably  present  broke  down  between 
Mary  and  myself,  as  it  breaks  down  in  a  thousand  other 
cases,  as  it  breaks  down  everywhere.  Our  social  life 
is  honeycombed  and  rotten  with  secret  hidden  relation- 
ships. The  rigid,  the  obtuse  and  the  unscrupulously 
cunning  escape;  the  honest  passion  sooner  or  later  flares 
out  and  destroys.  .  .  .  Here  is  a  difficulty  that  no  bul- 
lying imposition  of  arbitrary  rules  on  the  one  hand  nor 
any  reckless  abandonment  of  law  on  the  other,  can  solve. 
Humanity  has  yet  to  find  its  method  in  sexual  things; 
it  has  to  discover  the  use  and  the  limitation  of  jealousy. 
And  before  it  can  even  begin  to  attempt  to  find,  it  has  to 
cease  its  present  timid  secret  groping  in  shame  and  dark- 
ness and  turn  on  the  light  of  knowledge.  None  of  us 
knows  much  and  most  of  us  do  not  even  know  what  is 

known. 

\  • 

§8 

The  house  is  very  quiet  to-day.  It  is  your  mother's 
birthday,  and  you  three  children  have  gone  with  her 
and  Mademoiselle  Potin  into  the  forest  to  celebrate  the 
occasion.  Presently  I  shall  join  you.  The  sunlit  garden, 
with  its  tall  dreaming  lilies  against  the  trellised  vines 
upon  the  wall,  the  cedars  and  the  grassy  space  about 
the  sundial,  have  that  distinguished  stillness,  that  definite, 
palpable  and  almost  outlined  emptiness  which  is  so  to 
speak  your  negative  presence.  It  is  like  a  sheet  of  sunlit 
colored  paper  out  of  which  your  figures  have  been  cut. 
There  is  a  commotion  of  birds  in  the  jasmine,  and  your 
Barker  reclines  with  an  infinite  tranquillity,  a  masterless 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

dog,  upon  the  lawn.  I  take  up  this  writing  again  after  an 
interval  of  some  weeks.  I  have  been  in  Paris,  attending' 
the  Sabotage  Conference,  and  dealing  with  those  intricate 
puzzles  of  justice  and  discipline  and  the  secret  sources 
of  contentment  that  have  to  be  solved  if  sabotage  is  ever 
to  vanish  from  labor  struggles  again.  I  think  a  few 
points  have  been  made  clearer  in  that  curious  riddle  of 
reconciliations.  .  .  . 

Now  I  resume  this  story.  I  turn  over  the  sheets  that 
were  written  and  finished  before  my  departure,  and  come 
to  the  notes  for  what  is  to  follow. 

Perhaps  my  days  of  work  in  Paris  have  carried  my 
mind  on  beyond  the  point  at  which  I  left  the  narrative. 
I  sit  as  it  were  among  a  pile  of  memories  that  are  now 
all  disordered  and  mixed  up  together,  their  proper  se- 
quences and  connexions  lost.  I  cannot  trace  the  phases 
through  which  our  mutual  passion  rode  up  through  the 
restrained  and  dignified  intentions  of  our  friendship. 
But  I  know  that  presently  we  were  in  a  white  heat  of 
desire.  There  must  have  been  passages  that  I  now. 
altogether  forget,  moments  of  tense  transition.  I  am 
more  and  more  convinced  that  our  swiftest,  intensest, 
mental  changes  leave  far  less  vivid  memories  than  im- 
pressions one  receives  when  one  is  comparatively  passive. 
And  of  this  phase  in  my  life  of  which  I  am  now  telling 
I  have  clear  memories  of  a  time  when  we  talked  like 
brother  and  sister,  or  like  angels  if  you  will,  and  hard  upon 
that  came  a  time  when  we  were  planning  in  all  our  mo- 
ments together  how  and  when  and  where  we  might  meet 
in  secret  and  meet  again. 

Things  drift  with  a  phantom-like  uncertainty  into  my 
mind  and  pass  again;  those  fierce  motives  of  our  transi- 

155 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

tion  have  lost  now  all  stable  form  and  feature,  but  I 
believe  there  was  a  curious  tormenting  urgency  in  our 
jealousy  of  those  others,  of  Justin  on  my  part  and  of 
Rachel  on  hers.  At  first  we  had  talked  quite  freely  about 
Rachel,  had  discussed  my  conceivable  marriage  with  her. 
We  had  indeed  a  little  forced  that  topic,  as  if  to  reassure 
ourselves  of  the  honesty  of  our  new  footing.  But  the 
force  that  urged  us  nearer  pervaded  all  our  being.  It  was 
hard  enough  to  be  barred  apart,  to  snatch  back  our  hands 
from  touching,  to  avoid  each  other's  eyes,  to  hurry  a  little 
out  of  the  dusk  towards  the  lit  house  and  its  protecting 
servants,  but  the  constant  presence  and  suggestion  of  those 
others  from  whom  there  were  no  bars,  or  towards  whom 
bars  could  be  abolished  at  a  look,  at  an  impulse,  exacer- 
bated, that  hardship,  roused  a  fierce  insatiable  spirit  of 
revolt  within  us.  At  times  we  grew  angry  with  each 
other's  formalism,  came  near  to  quarrelling.  .  .  . 

I  associate  these  moods  with  the  golden  stillnesses  of  a 
prolonged  and  sultry  autumn,  and  with  slowly  falling 
leaves.  .  .  . 

I  will  not  tell  you  how  that  step  was  taken,  it  matters 
very  little  to  my  story,  nor  will  I  tell  which  one  of  us  it 
was  first  broke  the  barriers  down. 


§9 

But  I  do  want  to  tell  you  certain  things.  I  want  to 
tell  you  them  because  they  are  things  that  affect  you 
closely.  There  was  almost  from  the  first  a  difference 
between  Mary  and  myself  in  this,  that  I  wanted  to  be 
public  about  our  love,  I  wanted  to  be  open  and  defiant, 

156 


LADY    MARY   JUSTIN 

and  she — hesitated.  She  wanted  to  be  secret.  She 
wanted  to  keep  me;  I  sometimes  think  that  she  was 
moved  to  become  my  mistress  because  she  wanted  to 
keep  me.  But  she  also  wanted  to  keep  everything  else 
in  her  life, — her  position,  her  ample  freedoms  and  wealth 
and  dignity.  Our  love  was  to  be  a  secret  cavern,  Endym- 
ion's  cave.  I  was  ready  enough  to  do  what  I  could  to 
please  her,  and  for  a  time  I  served  that  secrecy,  lied,  pre- 
tended, agreed  to  false  addresses,  assumed  names,  and 
tangled  myself  in  a  net-work  of  furtive  proceedings. 
These  are  things  that  poison  and  consume  honest  love. 

You  will  learn  soon  enough  as  you  grow  to  be  a  man 
that  beneath  the  respectable  assumptions  of  our  social  life 
there  is  an  endless  intricate  world  of  subterfuge  and 
hidden  and  perverted  passion, — for  all  passion  that 
wears  a  mask  is  perversion — and  that  thousands  of 
people  of  our  sort  are  hiding  and  shamming  about  their 
desires,  their  gratifications,  their  true  relationships.  I 
do  not  mean  the  open  offenders,  for  they  are  mostly 
honest  and  gallant  people,  but  the  men  and  women  who 
sin  in  the  shadows,  the  people  who  are  not  clean  and 
scandalous,  but  immoral  and  respectable.  This  under- 
world is  not  for  us.  I  wish  that  I  who  have  looked  into 
it  could  in  some  way  inoculate  you  now  against  the 
repetition  of  my  misadventure.  We  Strattons  are  day- 
light men,  and  if  I  work  now  for  widened  facilities  of 
divorce,  for  an  organized  freedom  and  independence  of 
women,  and  greater  breadth  of  toleration,  it  is  because 
I  know  in  my  own  person  the  degradations,  the  falsity,  the 
bitterness,  that  can  lurk  beneath  the  inflexible  pretentions 
of  the  established  code  to-day. 

And  I  want  to  tell  you  too  of  something  altogether 
11  157 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

unforeseen  that  happened  to  us,  and  that  was  this,  that 
from  the  day  that  passion  carried  us  and  we  became  in 
the  narrower  sense  of  the  word  lovers,  all  the  wider 
interests  we  had  in  common,  our  political  intentions,  our 
impersonal  schemes,  began  to  pass  out  of  our  intercourse. 
Our  situation  closed  upon  us  like  a  trap  and  hid  the  sky. 
Something  more  intense  had  our  attention  by  the  feet, 
and  we  used  our  wings  no  more.  I  do  not  think  that  we 
even  had  the  real  happiness  and  beauty  and  delight  of  one 
another.  Because,  I  tell  you,  there  is  no  light  upon  kiss 
or  embrace  that  is  not  done  with  pride.  I  do  not  know 
why  it  should  be  so,  but  people  of  our  race  and  quality  are 
a  little  ashamed  of  mere  gratification  in  love.  Always 
we  seem  in  my  memory  to  have  been  whispering  with 
flushed  cheeks,  and  discussing  interminably — situation. 
Had  something  betrayed  us,  might  something  betray,  was 
this  or  that  sufficiently  cunning?  Had  we  perhaps  left  a 
footmark  or  failed  to  burn  a  note,  was  the  second  footman 
who  was  detailed  as  my  valet  even  now  pausing  astonished 
in  the  brushing  of  my  clothes  with  our  crumpled  secret 
in  his  hand?  Between  myself  and  the  clear  vision  of  this 
world  about  me  this  infernal  net-work  of  precautions 
spread  like  a  veil. 

And  it  was  not  only  a  matter  of  concealments  but 
of  positive  deceptions.  The  figure  of  Justin  comes  back 
to  me.  It  is  a  curious  thing  that  in  spite  of  our  bitter 
antagonism  and  the  savage  jealousy  we  were  to  feel  for 
one  another,  there  has  always  been,  and  there  remains 
now  in  my  thought  of  him,  a  certain  liking,  a  regret  at 
our  opposition,  a  quality  of  friendliness.  His  broad  face, 
which  the  common  impression  and  the  caricaturist  make 
so  powerful  and  eagle-like,  is  really  not  a  brutal  or  heavy 

158 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

face  at  all.  It  is  no  doubt  aquiline,  after  the  fashion  of 
an  eagle-owl,  the  mouth  and  chin  broad  and  the  eyes  very 
far  apart,  but  there  is  a  minute  puckering  of  the  brows 
which  combines  with  that  queer  streak  of  brown  dis- 
coloration that  runs  across  his  cheek  and  into  the  white 
of  his  eyes,  to  give  something  faintly  plaintive  and  pitiful 
to  his  expression,  an  effect  enhanced  by  the  dark  softness 
of  his  eyes.  They  are  gentle  eyes;  it  is  absurd  to  suppose 
them  the  eyes  of  a  violently  forceful  man.  And  indeed 
they  do  not  belie  Justin.  It  is  not  by  vehemence  or 
pressure  that  his  wealth  and  power  have  been  attained; 
it  is  by  the  sheer  detailed  abundance  of  his  mind.  In 
that  queer  big  brain  of  his  there  is  something  of  the 
calculating  boy  and  not  a  little  of  the  chess  champion; 
he  has  a  kind  of  financial  gift,  he  must  be  rich,  and  grows 
richer.  What  else  is  there  for  him  to  do?  How  many 
times  have  I  not  tried  to  glance  carelessly  at  his  face  and 
scrutinize  that  look  in  his  eyes,  and  ask  myself  was  that 
his  usual  look,  or  was  it  lit  by  an  instinctive  jealousy? 
Did  he  perhaps  begin  to  suspect?  I  had  become  a  per- 
sistent visitor  in  the  house,  he  might  well  be  jealous 
of  such  minor  favors  as  she  showed  me,  for  with  him  she 
talked  but  little  and  shared  no  thoughts.  His  manner 
with  her  was  tinctured  by  an  habituated  despair.  They 
were  extraordinarily  polite  and  friendly  with  one  an- 
other. .  .  . 

I  tried  a  hundred  sophistications  of  my  treachery  to 
him.  I  assured  myself  that  a  modern  woman  is  mistress 
and  owner  of  herself;  no  chattel,  and  so  forth.  But  he 
did  not  think  so,  and  neither  she  nor  I  were  behaving  as 
though  we  thought  so.  In  innumerable  little  things  we 
were  doing  our  best  tacitly  to  reassure  him.  And  so  you 

159 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

see  me  shaking  hands  with  this  man,  affecting  an  interest 
in  his  topics  and  affairs,  staying  in  his  house,  eating  his 
food  and  drinking  his  wine,  that  I  might  be  the  nearer  to 
his  wife.  It  is  not  the  first  time  that  has  been  done  in 
the  world,  there  are  esoteric  codes  to  justify  all  I  did;  I 
perceive  there  are  types  of  men  to  whom  such  relationships 
are  attractive  by  the  very  reason  of  their  illicit  excitement. 
But  we  Strattons  are  honest  people,  there  is  no  secretive 
passion  in  our  blood;  this  is  no  game  for  us;  never  you 
risk  the  playing  of  it,  little  son,  big  son  as  you  will  be 
when  you  read  this  story.  Perhaps,  but  I  hope  indeed 
not,  this  may  reach  you  too  late  to  be  a  warning,  come  to 
you  in  mid-situation.  Go  through  with  it  then,  inheritor 
of  mine,  and  keep  as  clean  as  you  can,  follow  the  warped 
honor  that  is  still  left  to  you — and  if  you  can,  come  out 
of  the  tangle.  .  .  . 

It  is  not  only  Justin  haunts  the  memories  of  that  furtive 
time,  but  Rachel  More.  I  see  her  still  as  she  was  then,  a 
straight,  white-dressed  girl  with  big  brown  eyes  that  re- 
garded me  now  with  perplexity,  now  with  a  faint  dismay. 
I  still  went  over  to  see  her,  and  my  manner  had  changed. 
I  had  nothing  to  say  to  her  now  and  everything  to  hide. 
Everything  between  us  hung  arrested,  and  nothing  could 
occur  to  make  an  end. 

I  told  Mary  I  must  cease  my  visits  to  the  Mores.  I 
tried  to  make  her  feel  my  own  sense  of  an  accumulating 
cruelty  to  Rachel.  "But  it  explains  away  so  much/'  she 
said.  "If  you  stop  going  there — everyone  will  talk. 
Everything  will  swing  round — and  point  here." 

"Rachel!"  I  protested. 

"No,"  she  said,  overbearing  me,  "you  must  keep  on 
going  to  Ridinghanger.  You  must.  You  must."  .  .  , 

1 60 


LADY   MARY  JUSTIN 

For  a  long  time  I  had  said  nothing  to  Mary  of  the 
burthen  these  pretences  were  to  me;  it  had  seemed  a 
monstrous  ingratitude  to  find  the  slightest  flaw  in  the 
passionate  love  and  intimacy  she  had  given  me.  But  at 
last  the  divergence  of  our  purposes  became  manifest  to 
us  both.  A  time  came  when  we  perceived  it  clearly  and 
discussed  it  openly.  I  have  still  a  vivid  recollection  of  a 
golden  October  day  when  we  had  met  at  the  edge  of  the 
plantation  that  overlooks  Bearshill.  She  had  come 
through  the  gardens  into  the  pine-wood,  and  I  had 
jumped  the  rusty  banked  stream  that  runs  down  the 
Bearshill  valley,  and  clambered  the  barbed  wire  fence. 
I  came  up  the  steep  bank  and  through  a  fringe  of  furze  to 
where  she  stood  in  the  shade ;  I  kissed  her  hand,  and  dis- 
covered mine  had  been  torn  open  by  one  of  the  thorns 
of  the  wire  and  was  dripping  blood.  "Mind  my  dress/' 
she  said,  and  we  laughed  as  we  kissed  with  my  arm  held 
aloof. 

We  sat  down  side  by  side  upon  the  warm  pine  needles 
that  carpeted  the  sand,  and  she  made  a  mothering  fuss 
about  my  petty  wound,  and  bound  it  in  my  handkerchief. 
We  looked  together  across  the  steep  gorge  at  the  blue 
ridge  of  trees  beyond.  "Anyone,"  she  said,  "might  have 
seen  us  this  minute/' 

"I  never  thought,"  I  said,  and  moved  a  foot  away  from 
her. 

"It's  too  late  if  they  have,"  said  she,  pulling  me  back 
to  her.  "Over  beyond  there,  that  must  be  Hindhead. 
Someone  with  a  telescope !" 

"That's  less  credible,"  I  said.  And  it  occurred  to  me 
that  the  grey  stretch  of  downland  beyond  must  be  the 
ridge  to  the  west  of  Ridinghanger. 

161 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

"I  wish/'  I  said,  "it  didn't  matter.  I  wish  I  could 
come  and  go  and  fear  nobody — and  spend  long  hours  with 
you — oh !  at  our  ease. ' ' 

"Now,"  she  said,  "we  spend  short  hours.  I  wonder 
if  I  would  like It's  no  good,  Stephen,  letting  our- 
selves think  of  things  that  can't  be.  Here  we  are.  Kiss 
that  hand,  my  lover,  there,  just  between  wrist  and  thumb 
— the  little  hollow.  Yes,  exactly  there." 

But  thoughts  had  been  set  going  in  my  mind.  "Why," 
I  said  presently,  "should  you  always  speak  of  things  that 
can't  be?  Why  should  we  take  all  this  as  if  it  were  all 
that  there  could  be?  I  want  long  hours.  I  want  you  to 
shine  all  the  day  through  on  my  life.  Now,  dear,  it's  as 
if  the  sun  was  shown  ever  and  again,  and  then  put  back 
behind  an  eclipse.  I  come  to  you  half -blinded,  I  go  away 
unsatisfied.  All  the  world  is  dark  in  between,  and  little 
phantom  yous  float  over  it." 

She  rested  her  cheek  on  her  hand  and  looked  at  me 
gravely. 

"You  are  hard  to  satisfy,  brother  heart,"  she  said. 

"I  live  in  snatches  of  brightness  and  all  the  rest  of  life 
is  waiting  and  thinking  and  waiting." 

"What  else  is  there?    Haven't  we  the  brightness?" 

"  I  want  you,"  I  said.     "  I  want  you  altogether." 

"After  so  much?" 

"I  want  the  more.  Mary,  I  want  you  to  come  away 
with  me.  No,  listen!  this  life— don't  think  I'm  not 
full  of  the  beauty,  the  happiness,  the  wonder—  But 
it's  a  suspense.  It  doesn't  go  on.  It's  just  a  dawn,  dear, 
a  splendid  dawn,  a  glory  of  color  and  brightness  and 
freshness  and  hope,  and— no  sun  rises.  I  want  the  day. 
Everything  else  has  stopped  with  me  and  stopped  with 

162 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

you.  I  do  nothing  with  my  politics  now, — I  pretend. 
I  have  no  plans  in  life  except  plans  for  meeting  you  and 
again  meeting  you.  I  want  to  go  on,  I  want  to  go  on  with 
you  and  take  up  work  and  the  world  again — you  beside 
me.  I  want  you  to  come  out  of  all  this  life — out  of  all 
this  immense  wealthy  emptiness  of  yours " 

"Stop,"  she  said,  "and  listen  to  me,  Stephen." 

She  paused  with  her  lips  pressed  together,  her  brows  a 
little  knit. 

"I  won't,"  she  said  slowly.  "I  am  going  on  like  this. 
I  and  you  are  going  to  be  lovers — just  as  we  are  lovers 
now — secret  lovers.  And  I  am  going  to  help  you  in  all 
your  projects,  hold  your  party  together — for  you  will  have 
a  party — my  house  shall  be  its  centre " 

"But  Justin " 

"He  takes  no  interest  in  politics.  He  will  do  what 
pleases  me." 

I  took  some  time  before  I  answered.  "You  don't 
understand  how  men  feel,"  I  said. 

She  waited  for  what  else  I  had  to  say.  I  lay  prone,  and 
gathered  together  and  shaped  and  reshaped  a  little  heap 

of  pine  needles.     "You  see I  can't  do  it.     I  want 

you." 

She  gripped  a  handful  of  my  hair,  and  tugged  hard 
between  each  word.  "Haven't  you  got  me?"  she  asked 
between  her  teeth.  ' '  What  more  could  you  have  ? ' ' 

"I  want  you  openly." 

She  folded  her  arms  beneath  her.     "No,"  she  said. 

For  a  little  while  neither  of  us  spoke. 

"It's  the  trouble  of  the  deceit?"  she  asked. 

"It's— the  deceit." 

"We  can  stop  all  that,"  she  said. 
163 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

I  looked  up  at  her  face  enquiringly. 

"By  having  no  more  to  hide,"  she  said,  with  her  eyes 
full  of  tears.  "If  it's  nothing  to  you 

"It's  everything  to  me,"  I  said.  "It's  overwhelming 
me.  Oh  Mary,  heart  of  my  life,  my  dear,  come  out  of 
this!  Come  with  me,  come  and  be  my  wife,  make  a  clean 
thing  of  it !  Let  me  take  you  away,  and  then  let  me  marry 
you.  I  know  it's  asking  you — to  come  to  a  sort  of 
poverty " 

But  Mary's  blue  eyes  were  alight  with  anger.  "Isn't 
it  a  clean^thing  now,  Stephen?"  she  was  crying.  "Do 
you  mean  that  you  and  I  aren't  clean  now?  Will  you 
never  understand?" 

"Oh  clean,"  I  answered,  "clean  as  Eve  in  the  garden. 
But  can  we  keep  clean?  Won't  the  shadow  of  our  false- 
hoods darken  at  all?  Come  out  of  it  while  we  are  still 
clean.  Come  with  me.  Justin  will  divorce  you.  We 
can  stay  abroad  and  marry  and  come  back." 

Mary  was  kneeling  up  now  with  her  hands  upon  her 
knees. 

"Come  back  to  what?"  she  cried.  "Parliament? — 
after  that?  You  boy!  you  sentimentalist!  you — you 
duffer!  Do  you  think  I'd  let  you  do  it  for  your  own  sake 
even?  Do  you  think  I  want  you — spoilt?  We  should 
come  back  to  mope  outside  of  things,  we  should  come 
back  to  fret  our  lives  out.  I  won't  do  it,  Stephen,  I  won't 
do  it.  End  this  if  you  like,  break  our  hearts  and  throw 
them  away  and  go  on  without  them,  but  to  turn  all 
our  lives  into  a  scandal,  to  give  ourselves  over  to  the 
mean  and  the  malicious,  a  prey  to  old  women — and  you 
damned  out  of  everything!  A  man  partly  forgiven!  A 
man  who  went  wrong  for  a  woman!  No!19 

164 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

She  sprang  lightly  to  her  feet  and  stood  over  me  as 
I  knelt  before  her.  "And  I  came  here  to  be  made  love 
to,  Stephen!  I  came  here  to  be  loved!  And  you  talk 
that  nonsense  !  You  remind  me  of  everything  — 
wretched!" 

She  lifted  up  her  hands  and  then  struck  down  with 
them,  a  gesture  of  infinite  impatience.  Her  face  as  she 
bent  to  me  was  alive  with  a  friendly  anger,  her  eyes 
suddenly  dark.  "You  duffer!"  she  repeated.  .  .  . 


§  10 

Discovery  followed  hard  upon  that  meeting.  I  had 
come  over  to  Martens  with  some  book  as  a  pretext; 
the  man  had  told  me  that  Lady  Mary  awaited  me  in 
her  blue  parlor,  and  I  went  unannounced  through  the 
long  gallery  to  find  her.  The  door  stood  a  little  ajar, 
I  opened  it  softly  so  that  she  did  not  hear  the,  and  saw  • 
her  seated  at  her  writing-desk  with  her  back  to  me,  and 
her  cheek  and  eyebrow  just  touched  by  the  sunlight 
from  the  open  terrace  window.  She  was  writing  a  note. 
I  put  my  hand  about  her  shoulder,  and  bent  to  kiss  her 
as  she  turned.  Then  as  she  came  round  to  me  she  started, 
was  for  a  moment  rigid,  then  thrust  me  from  her  and  rose 
very  slowly  to  her  feet. 

I  turned  to  the  window  and  became  as  rigid,  facing 
Justin.  He  was  standing  on  the  terrace,  staring  at  us, 
with  a  face  that  looked  stupid  and  inexpressive  and—- 
very white.  The  sky  behind  him,  appropriately  enough, 
was  full  of  the  tattered  inky  onset  of  a  thunderstorm. 
So  we  remained  for  a  lengthy  second  perhaps,  a  trite 

165 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

tableau  vivant.    We  two  seemed  to  hang  helplessly  upon 
Justin,  and  he  was  the  first  of  us  to  move. 

He 'made  a  queer,  incomplete  gesture  with  one  hand, 
as  if  he  wanted  to  undo  the  top  button  of  his  waistcoat 
and  then  thought  better  of  it.  He  came  very  slowly 
into  the  room.  When  he  spoke  his  voice  had  neither  rage 
nor  denunciation  in  it.  It  was  simply  conversational. 
"  I  felt  this  was  going  on/'  he  said.  And  then  to  his  wife 
with  the  note  of  one  who  remarks  dispassionately  on  a 
peculiar  situation.  "Yet  somehow  it  seemed  wrong  and 
unnatural  to  think  such  a  thing  of  you." 

His  face  took  on  something  of  the  vexed  look  of  a  child 
who  struggles  with  a  difficult  task.  "Do  you  mind,"  he 
said  to  me,  "will  you  go?" 

I  took  a  moment  for  my  reply.     "  No,"  I  said.     "  Since 

you  know  at  last There  are  things  to  be  said." 

"  No, "  said  Mary,  suddenly.  "  Go !  Let  me  talk  to  him/ ' 
"No,"  I  said,  "my  place  is  here  beside  you." 
He  seemed  not  to  hear  me.  His  eyes  were  fixed  on 
Mary.  He  seemed  to  think  he  had  dismissed  me,  and 
that  I  was  no  longer  there.  His  mind  was  not  concerned 
about  me,  but  about  her.  He  spoke  as  though  what  he 
said  had  been  in  his  mind,  and  no  doubt  it  had  been 
in  his  mind,  for  many  days.  "I  didn't  deserve  this,"  he 
said  to  her.  "I've  tried  to  make  your  life  as  you  wanted 
your  life.  It's  astonishing  to  find — I  haven't.  You  gave 
no  sign.  I  suppose  I  ought  to  have  felt  all  this  happen- 
ing, but  it  comes  upon  me  surprisingly.  I  don't  know 
what  I'm  to  do."  He  became  aware  of  me  again.  "And 
you!"  he  said.  "What  am  I  to  do?  To  think  that  you 
—  while  I  have  been  treating  her  like  some  sacred 
thing.  .  .  ." 

166 


LADY    MARY   JUSTIN 

The  color  was  creeping  back  into  his  face.  Indignation 
had  come  into  his  voice,  the  first  yellow  lights  of  rising 
jealousy  showed  in  his  eyes. 

"Stephen,"  I  heard  Mary  say,  "will  you  leave  me  to 
talk  to  my  husband?" 

"There  is  only  one  thing  to  do,"  I  said.  "What  is  the 
need  of  talking?  We  two  are  lovers,  Justin."  I  spoke  to 
both  of  them.  "We  two  must  go  out  into  the  world,  go 
out  now  together.  This  marriage  of  yours — it's  no  mar- 
riage, no  real  marriage.  ..." 

I  think  I  said  that.  I  seem  to  remember  saying  that; 
perhaps  with  other  phrases  that  I  have  forgotten.  But 
my  memory  of  what  we  said  and  did,  which  is  so  photo- 
graphically clear  of  these  earlier  passages  that  I  believe 
I  can  answer  for  every  gesture  and  nearly  every  word 
that  I  have  set  down,  becomes  suddenly  turbid.  The 
high  tension  of  our  first  confrontation  was  giving  place 
to  a  flood  of  emotional  impulse.  We  all  became  eager 
to  talk,  to  impose  interpretations  and  justifications  upon 
our  situation.  We  all  three  became  divided  between  our 
partial  attention  to  one  another  and  our  urgent  necessity 
to  keep  hold  of  our  points  of  view.  That  I  think  is  the 
common  tragedy  of  almost  all  human  conflicts,  that 
rapid  breakdown  from  the  first  cool  apprehension  of  an 
issue  to  heat,  confusion,  and  insistence.  I  do  not  know 
if  indeed  we  raised  our  voices,  but  my  memory  has  an 
effect  of  raised  voices,  and  when  at  last  I  went  out  of  the 
house  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  men-servants  in  the  hall 
were  as  hushed  as  beasts  before  a  thunderstorm,  and  all 
of  them  quite  fully  aware  of  the  tremendous  catastrophe 
that  had  come  to  Martens.  And  moreover,  as  I  recalled 
afterwards  with  astonishment,  I  went  past  them  and  out 

167 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

into  the  driving  rain  unprotected,  and  not  one  of  them 
stirred  a  serviceable  hand.  .  .  . 

What  was  it  we  said?  I  have  a  vivid  sense  of  declaring 
not  once  only  but  several  times  that  Mary  and  I  were 
husband  and  wife  "in  the  sight  of  God."  I  was  full  of 
the  idea  that  now  she  must  inevitably  be  mine.  I  must 
have  spoken  to  Justin  at  times  as  if  he  had  come  merely 
to  confirm  my  view  of  the  long  dispute  there  had  been 
between  us.  For  a  while  my  mind  resisted  his  extraor- 
dinary attitude  that  the  matter  lay  between  him  and  Mary, 
that  I  was  in  some  way  an  interloper.  It  seemed  to  me 
there  was  nothing  for  it  now  but  that  Mary  should  stand 
by  my  side  and  face  Justin  with  the  world  behind  him. 
I  remember  my  confused  sense  that  presently  she  and  I 
would  have  to  go  straight  out  of  Martens.  And  she  was 
wearing  a  tea-gown,  easy  and  open,  and  the  flimsiest  of 
slippers.  Any  packing,  any  change  of  clothing,  struck  me 
as  an  incredible  anti-climax.  I  had  visions  of  our  going 
forth,  hand  in  hand.  Outside  was  the  soughing  of  a 
coming  storm,  a  chill  wind  drove  a  tumult  of  leaves  along 
the  terrace,  the  door  slammed  and  yawned  open  again, 
and  then  came  the  rain.  Justin,  I  remember,  still  talking, 
closed  the  door.  I  tried  to  think  how  I  could  get  to  the 
station  five  miles  away,  and  then  what  we  could  do  in 
London.  We  should  seem  rather  odd  visitors  to  an 
hotel— without  luggage.  All  this  was  behind  my  valiant 
demand  that  she  should  come  with  me,  and  come  now. 

And  then  my  mind  was  lanced  by  the  thin  edge  of 
realization  that  she  did  not  intend  to  come  now,  and 
that  Justin  was  resolved  she  should  not  do  so.  After 
the  first  shock  of  finding  herself  discovered  she  had 
stood  pale  but  uncowed  before  her  bureau,  with  her  eyes 

168 


LADY    MARY   JUSTIN 

rather  on  him  than  on  me.  Her  hands,  I  think,  were 
behind  her  upon  the  edge  of  the  writing  flap,  and  she  was 
a  little  leaning  upon  them.  She  had  the  watchful*  alert 
expression  of  one  who  faces  an  unanticipated  but  by  no 
means  overwhelming  situation.  She  cast  a  remark  to 
me.  "But  I  do  not  want  to  come  with  you,"  she  said. 
"I  have  told  you  I  do  not  want  to  come  with  you."  All 
her  mind  seemed  concentrated  upon  what  she  should  do 
with  Justin.  "You  must  send  him  away,"  he  was  saying. 
"  It's  an  abominable  thing.  It  must  stop.  How  can  you 
dream  it  should  go  on?" 

"But  you  said  when  you  married  me  I  should  be  free, 
I  should  own  myself!  You  gave  me  this  house " 

4 '  What !    To  disgrace  myself !' ' 

I  was  moved  to  intervene. 

"You  must  choose  between  us,  Mary,"  I  cried.  "It 
is  impossible  you  should  stay  here!  You  cannot  stay 
here." 

She  turned  upon  me,  a  creature  at  bay.  "Why 
shouldn't  I  stay  here?  Why  must  I  choose  between 
two  men?  I  want  neither  of  you.  I  want  myself.  I'm 
not  a  thing.  I'm  a  human  being.  I'm  not  your  thing, 
Justin — nor  yours,  Stephen.  Yet  you  want  to  quarrel 
over  me — like  two  dogs  over  a  bone.  I  am  going  to  stay 
here — in  my  house!  It's  my  house.  I  made  it.  Every 
room  of  it  is  full  of  me.  Here  I  am!" 

She  stood  there  making  this  magnificently  extravagant 
claim;  her  eyes  blazing  blue,  her  hair  a  little  dishevelled 
with  a  strand  across  her  cheek. 

Both  I  and  Justin  spoke  together,  and  then  turned  in 
helpless  anger  upon  one  another.  I  remember  that  with 
the  clumsiest  of  weak  gestures  he  bade  me  begone  from 

169 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

the  house,  and  that  I  with  a  now  rather  deflated  rhetoric 
answered  I  would  go  only  with  Mary  at  my  side.  And 
there  she  stood,  less  like  a  desperate  rebel  against  the  most 
fundamental  social  relations  than  an  indignant  princess, 
and  demanded  of  us  and  high  heaven,  "  Why  should  I  be 
fought  for?  Why  should  I  be  fought  for?" 

And  then  abruptly  she  gathered  her  skirts  in  her  hand 
and  advanced.  "Open  that  door,  Stephen,"  she  said,  and 
was  gone  with  a  silken  whirl  and  rustle  from  our  presence. 

We  were  left  regarding  one  another  with  blank  expres- 
sions. 

Her  departure  had  torn  the  substance  out  of  our 
dispute.  For  the  moment  we  found  ourselves  left  with 
a  new  situation  for  which  there  is  as  yet  no  tradition 
of  behavior.  We  had  become  actors  in  that  new  human 
comedy  that  is  just  beginning  in  the  world,  that  comedy 
in  which  men  still  dispute  the  possession  and  the  manner 
of  the  possession  of  woman  according  to  the  ancient 
rules,  while  they  on  their  side  are  determining  ever 
more  definitely  that  they  will  not  be  possessed.  .  .  . 

We  had  little  to  say  to  one  another, — mere  echoes  and 
endorsements  of  our  recent  declarations.  "She  must 
come  to  me,"  said  I.  And  he,  "I  will  save  her  from  that 
at  any  cost." 

That  was  the  gist  of  our  confrontation,  and  then  I 
turned  about  and  walked  along  the  gallery  towards  the 
entrance,  with  Justin  following  me  slowly.  I  was  full 
of  the  wrath  of  baffled  heroics;  I  turned  towards  him 
with  something  of  a  gesture.  Down  the  perspective  of 
the  white  and  empty  gallery  he  appeared  small  and 
perplexed.  The  panes  of  the  tall  French  windows  were 
slashed  with  rain.  .  .  . 

170 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 


§n 

I  forget  now  absolutely  what  I  may  have  expected  to 
happen  next.  I  cannot  remember  my  return  to  my 
father's  house  that  day.  But  I  know  that  what  did 
happen  was  the  most  unanticipated  and  incredible 
experience  of  my  life.  It  was  as  if  the  whole  world  of 
mankind  were  suddenly  to  turn  upside  down  ai).d  people 
go  about  calmly  in  positions  of  complete  inversion.  I 
had  a  note  from  Mary  on  the  morning  after  this  dis- 
covery that  indeed  dealt  with  that  but  was  otherwise  not 
very  different  from  endless  notes  I  had  received  before 
our  crisis.  It  was  destroyed,  so  that  I  do  not  know  its 
exact  text  now,  but  it  did  not  add  anything  material  to  the 
situation,  or  give  me  the  faintest  shadow  to  intimate 
what  crept  close  upon  us  both.  She  repeated  her  strangely 
thwarting  refusal  to  come  away  and  live  with  me.  She 
seemed  indignant  that  we  had  been  discovered — as  though 
Justin  had  indulged  in  an  excess  of  existence  by  discovering 
us.  I  completed  and  despatched  to  her  a  long  letter  I  had 
already  been  writing  overnight  in  which  I  made  clear 
the  hopeless  impossibility  of  her  attitude,  vowed  all  my 
life  and  strength  to  her,  tried  to  make  some  picture  of  the 
happiness  that  was  possible  for  us  together,  sketched  as 
definitely  as  I  could  when  and  where  we  might  meert  and 
whither  we  might  go.  It  must  have  made  an  extraor- 
dinary jumble  of  protest,  persuasion  and  practicality. 
It  never  reached  her;  it  was  intercepted  by  Justin. 

I  have  gathered  since  that  after  I  left  Martens  he  sent 
telegrams  to  Guy  and  Philip  and  her  cousin  Lord  Tarvrille. 
He  was  I  think  amazed  beyond  measure  at  this  revelation 

171 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

of  the  possibilities  of  his  cold  and  distant  wife,  with  a 
vast  passion  of  jealousy  awaking  in  him,  and  absolutely 
incapable  of  forming  any  plan  to  meet  the  demands  of  his 
extraordinary  situation.  Guy  and  Philip  got  to  him  that 
night,  Tarvrille  came  down  next  morning,  and  Martens 
became  a  debate.  Justin  did  not  so  much  express  views 
and  intentions  as  have  them  extracted  from  him;  it  was 
manifest  he  was  prepared  for  the  amplest  forgiveness  of 
his  wife  if  only  I  could  be  obliterated  from  their  world. 
Confronted  with  her  brothers,  the  two  men  in  the  world 
who  could  be  frankly  brutal  to  her,  Mary's  dignity  suf- 
fered; she  persisted  she  meant  to  go  on  seeing  me,  but  she 
was  reduced  to  passionate  tears. 

Into  some  such  state  of  affairs  I  came  that  morning 
on  the  heels  of  my  letter,  demanding  Lady  Mary  of  a 
scared  evasive  butler. 

Maxton  and  Tarvrille  appeared:  "Hullo,  Stratton!" 
said  Tarvrille,  with  a  fine  flavor  of  an  agreeable  chance 
meeting.  Philip  had  doubts  about  his  greeting  me,  and 
then  extended  his  reluctant  hand  with  a  nervous  grin 
to  excuse  the  delay. 

"I  want  to  see  Lady  Mary,"  said  I,  stiffly. 

"She's  not  up  yet/'  said  Tarvrille,  with  a  hand  on 
my  shoulder.  "Come  and  have  a  talk  in  the  garden." 

We  went  out  with  Tarvrille  expanding  the  topic  of  the 
seasons.  "It's  a  damned  good  month,  November,  say 
what  you  like  about  it."  Philip  walked  grimly  silent  on 
my  other  hand. 

"And  it's  a  damned  awkward  situation  youVe  got  us 
into,  Stratton,"  said  Tarvrille,  "say  what  you  like  about 

lw. 

"It  isn't  as  though  old  Justin  was  any  sort  of  beast," 
172 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

he  reflected,  "or  anything  like  that,  you  know.  He's 
a  most  astonishing  decent  chap,  clean  as  they  make 
them." 

"This  isn't  a  beastly  intrigue,"  I  said. 

"It  never  is,"  said  Tarvrille  genially. 

"We've  loved  each  other  a  long  time.  It's  just  flared 
out  here." 

"No  doubt  of  that,"  said  Tarvrille.  "It's  been  like 
a  beacon  to  all  Surrey." 

"It's  one  of  those  cases  where  things  have  to  be  re- 
adjusted. The  best  thing  to  do  is  for  Mary  and  me  to  go 

abroad " 

'"Yes,  but  does  Mary  think  so?" 

"Look  here!"  said  Philip  in  a  voice  thick  with  rage. 
' '  I  won'L  have  Mary  divorced.  I  won't.  See  ?  I  won't. ' ' 

"What  the  devil's  it  got  to  do  with  you?91  I  asked  with 
an  answering  flash  of  fury. 

Tarvrille's  arm  ran  through  mine.     "Nobody's  going 
to   divorce   Mary,"    he   said   reassuringly.     "Not   even 
Justin.     He  doesn't  want  to,  and  nobody  else  can,  and 
there  you  are  I" 
,    "But  we  two " 

' '  You  two  have  had  a  tremendously  good  time.  You've 
got  found  out — and  there  you  are!" 

"This  thing  has  got  to  stop  absolutely  now,"  said 
Philip  and  echoed  with  a  note  of  satisfaction  in  his  own 
phrasing,  "absolutely  now." 

"You  see,  Stratton,"  said  Tarvrille  as  if  he  were  expand- 
ing Philip's  assertion,  "there's  been  too  many  divorces 
in  society.  It's  demoralizing  people.  It's  discrediting  us. 
It's  setting  class  against  class.  Everybody  is  saying  why 
don't  these  big  people  either  set  about  respecting  the 
12  173 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

law  or  altering  it.  Common  people  are  getting  too  in- 
fernally clear-headed.  Hitherto  it's  mattered  so  little. 
.  .  .  But  we  can't  stand  any  more  of  it,  Stratton,  now. 
It's  something  more  than  a  private  issue;  it's  a  question 
of  public  policy.  We  can't  stand  any  more  divorces. ' ' 

He  reflected.  "We  have  to  consider  something  more 
than  our  own  personal  inclinations.  We've  got  no 
business  to  be  here  at  all  if  we're  not  a  responsible  class. 
We  owe  something — to  ourselves. " 

It  was  as  if  Tarvrille  was  as  concerned  as  I  was  for 
this  particular  divorce,  as  if  he  struggled  with  a  lively 
desire  to  see  me  and  Mary  happily  married  after  the 
shortest  possible  interval.  And  indeed  he  manifestly 
wasn't  unsympathetic;  he  had  the  strongest  proclivity 
for  the  romantic  and  picturesque,  and  it  was  largely  the 
romantic  picturesqueness  of  renunciation  that  he  urged 
upon  me.  Philip  for  the  most  part  maintained  a  re- 
sentful silence;  he  was  a  clenched  anger  against  me, 
against  Mary,  against  the  flaming  possibilities  that 
threatened  the  sister  of  Lord  Maxton,  that  most  prom- 
ising and  distinguished  young  man. 

Of  course  their  plans  must  have  been  definitely  made 
before  this  talk,  probably  they  had  made  them  over- 
night, and  probably  it  was  Tarvrille  had  given  them  a 
practicable  shape,  but  he  threw  over  the  whole  of  our 
talk  so  satisfying  a  suggestion  of  arrest  and  prolonged 
discussion  that  it  never  occurred  to  me  that  I  should  not 
be  able  to  come  again  on  the  morrow  and  renew  my 
demand  to  see  Mary.  Even  when  next  day  I  turned  my 
face  to  Martens  and  saw  the  flag  had  vanished  from  the 
flagstaff,  it  seemed  merely  a  token  of  that  household's 
perturbation.  I  thought  the  house  looked  oddly  blank 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

and  sleepy  as  I  drew  near,  but  I  did  not  perceive  that  this 
was  because  all  the  blinds  were  drawn.  The  door  upon 
the  lawn  was  closed,  and  presently  the  butler  came  to 
open  it.  He  was  in  an  old  white  jacket,  and  collarless. 
"Lady  Mary!"  he  said.  "Lady  Mary  has  gone,  sir. 
She  and  Mr.  Justin  went  yesterday  after  you  called." 

"Gone!"  said  I.     "But  where?" 

"I  think  abroad,  sir." 

"Abroad!" 

"I  think  abroad." 

"But They've  left  an  address?" 

"Only  to  Mr.  Justin's  office,"  said  the  man.  "Any 
letters  will  be  forwarded  from  there." 

I  paused  upon  the  step.  He  remained  stiffly  def- 
erential, but  with  an  air  of  having  disposed  of  me.  He 
reproved  me  tacitly  for  forgetting  that  I  ought  to  conceal 
my  astonishment  at  this  disappearance.  He  was  indeed 
an  admirable  man-servant.  "Thank  you,"  said  I,  and 
dropped  away  defeated  from  the  door. 

I  went  down  the  broad  steps,  walked  out  up  the  lawn, 
and  surveyed  house  and  trees  and  garden  and  sky.  To 
the  heights  and  the  depths  and  the  uttermost,  I  knew  now 
what  it  was  to  be  amazed.  .  .  . 


§  12 

§ 

I  had  felt  myself  an  actor  in  a  drama,  and  now  I  had 
very  much  the  feeling  an  actor  would  have  who  answers 
to  a  cue  and  finds  himself  in  mid-stage  with  the  scenery 
and  the  rest  of  the  cast  suddenly  vanished  behind  him. 
By  that  mixture  of  force  and  persuasion  which  avails 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

itself  of  a  woman's  instinctive  and  cultivated  dread  of 
disputes  and  raised  voices  and  the  betrayal  of  conten- 
tion to  strangers,  by  the  sheer  tiring  down  of  nerves  and 
of  sleepless  body  and  by  threats  of  an  immediate  divorce 
and  a  campaign  of  ruin  against  me,  these  three  men  had 
obliged  Mary  to  leave  Martens  and  go  with  them  to 
Southampton,  and  thence  they  took  her  in  Justin's  yacht, 
the  Water-Witch,  to  Waterford,  and  thence  by  train  to  a 
hired  house,  an  adapted  old  castle  at  Mirk  near  Crogham 
in  Mayo.  There  for  all  practical  purposes  she  was  a 
prisoner.  They  took  away  her  purse,  and  she  was  four 
miles  from  a  pillar-box  and  ten  from  a  telegraph  office. 
This  house  they  had  taken  furnished  without  seeing  it 
on  the  recommendation  of  a  London  agent,  and  in  the 
name  of  Justin's  solicitor.  Thither  presently  went  Lady 
Ladislaw,  and  an  announcement  appeared  in  the  Times 
that  Justin  and  Lady  Mary  had  gone  abroad  for  a  time 
and  that  no  letters  would  be  forwarded. 

I  have  never  learnt  the  particulars  of  that  abduction, 
but  I  imagine  Mary  astonished,  her  pride  outraged, 
humiliated,  helpless,  perplexed  and  maintaining  a  cer- 
tain outward  dignity.  Moreover,  as  I  was  presently 
to  be  told,  she  was  ill.  Guy  and  Philip  were,  I  believe, 
the  moving  spirits  in  the  affair;  Tarvrille  was  their  apolo- 
getic accomplice,  Justin  took  the  responsibility  for  what 
they  did  and  bore  the  cost,  he  was  bitterly  ashamed  to 
have  these  compulsions  applied  to  his  wife,  but  full  now 
of  a  gusty  fury  against  myself.  He  loved  Mary  still 
with  a  love  that  was  shamed  and  torn  and  bleeding,  but 
his  ruling  passion  was  that  infinitely  stronger  passion 
than  love  in  our  poor  human  hearts,  jealousy.  He  was 
prepared  to  fight  for  her  now  as  men  fight  for  a  flag, 

176 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

tearing  it  to  pieces  in  the  struggle.  He  meant  now  to 
keep  Mary.  That  settled,  he  was  prepared  to  consider 
whether  he  still  loved  her  or  she  him.  .  .  . 

Now  here  it  may  seem  to  you  that  we  are  on  the  very 
verge  of  romance.  Here  is  a  beautiful  lady  carried  off 
and  held  prisoner  in  a  wild  old  place,  standing  out  half 
cut  off  from  the  mainland  among  the  wintry  breakers  of 
the  west  coast  of  Ireland.  Here  is  the  lover,  baffled  but 
insistent.  Here  are  the  fierce  brothers  and  the  stern 
dragon  husband,  and  you  have  but  to  make  out  that  the 
marriage  was  compulsory,  irregular  and,  on  the  ground 
of  that  irregularity,  finally  dissoluble,  to  furnish  forth  a 
theme  for  Marriott  Watson  in  his  most  admirable  and 
adventurous  vein.  You  can  imagine  the  happy  chances 
that  would  have  guided  me  to  the  hiding-place,  the 
trusty  friend  who  would  have  come  with  me  and  told  the 
story,  the  grim  siege  of  the  place — all  as  it  were  sotto 
wee  for  fear  of  scandal — the  fight  with  Guy  in  the  little 
cave,  my  attempted  assassination,  the  secret  passage. 
Would  to  heaven  life  had  those  rich  simplicities,  and  one 
could  meet  one's  man  at  the  end  of  a  sword!  My  siege 
of  Mirk  makes  a  very  different  story  from  that. 

In  the  first  place  I  had  no  trusted  friend  of  so  extrav- 
agant a  friendship  as  such  aid  would  demand.  I  had 
no  one  whom  it  seemed  permissible  to  tell  of  our  relations. 
I  was  not  one  man  against  three  or  four  men  in  a  romantic 
struggle  for  a  woman.  I  was  one  man  against  something 
infinitely  greater  than  that,  I  was  one  man  against  near- 
ly all  men,  one  man  against  laws,  traditions,  jnstincts,  in- 
stitutions, social  order.  Whatever  my  position  had  been 
before,  my  continuing  pursuit  of  Mary  was  open  social 
rebellion.  And  I  was  in  a  state  of  extreme  uncertainty 

177 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

how  far  Mary  was  a  willing  agent  in  this  abrupt  dis- 
appearance. I  was  disposed  to  think  she  had  consented 
far  more  than  she  had  done  to  this  astonishing  step. 
Carrying  off  an  unwilling  woman  was  outside  my  imagina- 
tive range.  It  was  luminously  clear  in  my  mind  that  so 
far  she  had  never  countenanced  the  idea  of  flight  with  me, 
and  until  she  did  I  was  absolutely  bound  to  silence  about 
her.  I  felt  that  until  I  saw  her  face  to  face  again,  and  was 
sure  she  wanted  me  to  release  her,  that  prohibition  held. 
Yet  how  was  I  to  get  at  her  and  hear  what  she  had  to  say? 
Clearly  it  was  possible  that  she  was  under  restraint,  but 
I  did  not  know;  I  was  not  certain,  I  could  not  prove  it. 
At  Guildford  station  I  gathered,  after  ignominious  en- 
quiries, that  the  Justins  had  booked  to  London.  I  had 
two  days  of  nearly  frantic  inactivity  at  home,  and  then 
pretended  business  that  took  me  to  London,  for  fear 
that  I  should  break  out  to  my  father.  I  came  up  re- 
volving a  dozen  impossible  projects  of  action  in  my  mind. 
I  had  to  get  into  touch  with  Mary,  at  that  my  mind  hung 
and  stopped.  All  through  the  twenty-four  hours  my 
nerves  jumped  at  every  knock  upon  my  door;  this  might 
be  the  letter,  this  might  be  the  telegram,  this  might  be 
herself  escaped  and  come  to  me.  The  days  passed  like 
days  upon  a  painful  sick-bed,  grey  or  foggy  London  days 
of  an  appalling  length  and  emptiness.  If  I  sat  at  home  my 
imagination  tortured  me;  if  I  went  out  I  wanted  to  be 
back  and  see  if  any  communication  had  come.  I  tried 
repeatedly  to  see  Tarvrille.  I  had  an  idea  of  obtaining 
a  complete  outfit  for  an  elopement,  but  I  was  restrained 
by  my  entire  ignorance  of  what  a  woman  may  need.  I 
tried  to  equip  myself  for  a  sudden  crisis  by  the  complet- 
est  preparation  of  every  possible  aspect.  I  did  some 

178 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

absurd  and  ill-advised  things.  f astonished  a  respectable 
solicitor  in  a  grimy  little  office  behind  a  queer  little  court 
with  trees  near  Cornhill,  by  asking  him  to  give  advice 
to  an  anonymous  client  and  then  putting  my  anonymous 
case  before  him.  "Suppose,"  said  I,  "it  was  for  the  plot 
of  a  play."  He  nodded  gravely. 

My  case  as  I  stated  it  struck  me  as  an  unattractive 
one. 

"Application  for  a  Writ  of  Habeas  Corpus,"  he  con- 
sidered with  eyes  that  tried  to  remain  severely  impartial, 
"by  a  Wife's  Lover,  who  wants  to  find  out  where  she  is. 
.  .  .  It's  unusual.  You  will  be  requiring  the  husband  to 
produce  her  Corpus.  ...  I  don't  think — speaking  in  the 
same  general  terms  as  those  in  which  you  put  the  cir- 
cumstances, it  would  be  likely  to  succeed.  .  .  .  No." 

Then  I  overcame  a  profound  repugnance  and  went 
to  a  firm  of  private  detectives.  It  had  occurred  to  me 
that  if  I  could  have  Justin,  Tarvrille,  Guy  or  Philip 
traced  I  might  get  a  clue  to  Mary's  hiding-place.  I 
remember  a  queer  little  office,  a  blusterous,  frock-coated 
creature  with  a  pock-marked  face,  iron-grey  hair,  an  eye- 
glass and  a  strained  tenor  voice,  who  told  me  twice  that 
he  was  a  gentleman  and  several  times  that  he  would 
prefer  not  to  do  business  than  to  do  it  in  an  ungentle- 
manly  manner,  and  who  was  quite  obviously  ready  and 
eager  to  blackmail  either  side  in  any  scandal  into  which 
spite  or  weakness  admitted  his  gesticulating  fingers.  He 
alluded  vaguely  to  his  staff,  to  his  woman  helpers,  "some 
personally  attached  to  me,"  to  his  remarkable  under- 
ground knowledge  of  social  life — "the  illicit  side."  What 
could  he  do  for  me?  There  was  nothing,  I  said,  illicit 
about  me.  His  interest  waned  a  little.  I  told  him  that 

179 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

I  was  interested  in  certain  financial  matters,  no  matter 
what  they  were,  and  that  I  wanted  to  have  a  report  of  the 
movements  of  Justin  and  his  brothers-in-law  for  the  past 
few  weeks  and  for  a  little  time  to  come.  "  You  want  them 
watched?"  said  my  private  enquiry  agent,  leaning  over  the 
desk  towards  me  and  betraying  a  slight  squint.  "  Exact- 
ly," said  I.  "I  want  to  know  what  sort  of  things  they 
are  looking  at  just  at  present." 

"Have  you  any  inkling ?"'  . 

"None." 

"If  our  agents  have  to  travel " 

I  expressed  a  reasonable  generosity  in  the  matter  of 
expenses,  and  left  him  at  last  with  a  vague  discomfort 
in  my  mind.  How  far  mightn't  this  undesirable  unearth 
the  whole  business  in  the  course  of  his  investigations? 
And  then  what  could  he  do?  Suppose  I  went  back  forth- 
with and  stopped  his  enquiries  before  they  began !  I  had 
a  disagreeable  feeling  of  meanness  that  I  couldn't  shake 
off;  I  felt  I  was  taking  up  a  weapon  that  Justin  didn't 
deserve.  Yet  I  argued  with  myself  that  the  abduction 
of  Mary  justified  any  such  course. 

As  I  was  still  debating  this  I  saw  Philip.  He  was  per- 
haps twenty  yards  ahead  of  me,  he  was  paying  off  a  han- 
som which  had  just  put  him  down  outside  Blake's. 
"Philip,"  I  cried,  following  him  up  the  steps  and  over- 
taking him  and  seizing  his  arm  as  the  commissionaire 
opened  the  door  for  him.  "Philip!  What  have  you 
people  done  with  Mary?  Where  is  Mary?" 

He  turned  a  white  face  to  me.  "How  dare  you,"  he 
said  with  a  catch  of  the  breath,  "mention  my  sister?" 

^  I  spoke  in  an  undertone,  and  stepped  a  little  between 
him  and  the  man  at  the  door  in  order  that  the  latter 

1 80 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

might  not  hear  what  I  said.  "I  want  to  see  her,"  I  ex- 
postulated. "I  must  see  her.  What  you  are  doing  is 
not  playing  the  game.  I've  got  to  see  her." 

"Let  go  of  my  arm,  sir!"  cried  he,  and  suddenly  I  felt 
a  whirlwind  of  rage  answering  the  rage  in  his  eyes.  The 
pent-up  exasperation  of  three  weeks  rushed  to  its  violent 
release.  He  struck  me  in  the  face  with  the  hand  that  was 
gripped  about  his  umbrella.  He  meant  to  strike  me  in 
the  face  and  then  escape  into  his  club,  but  before  he  could 
get  away  from  me  after  his  blow  I  had  flung  out  at  him, 
and  had  hit  him  under  the  jawbone.  My  blow  followed 
his  before  guard  or  counter  was  possible.  I  hit  with  all 
my  being.  It  was  an  amazing  flare  up  of  animal  passion; 
from  the  moment  that  I  perceived  he  was  striking  at  me 
to  the  moment  when  both  of  us  came  staggering  across 
the  door-mat  into  the  dignified  and  spacious  hall-way  of 
Blake's,  we  were  back  at  the  ancestral  ape,  and  we  did 
exactly  what  the  ancestral  ape  would  have  done.  The 
arms  of  the  commissionaire  about  my  waist,  the  rush 
of  the  astonished  porter  from  his  little  glass  box,  two 
incredibly  startled  and  delighted  pages,  and  an  interven- 
ing member  bawling  out  "Sir!  Sir!"  converged  to  remind 
us  that  we  were  a  million  years  or  so  beyond  those  purely 
arboreal  days.  .  .  . 

We  seemed  for  a  time  to  be  confronted  before  an 
audience  that  hesitated  to  interfere.  ' '  How  dare  you  name 
my  sister  to  me?"  he  shouted  at  me,  and  brought  to  my 
mind  the  amazing  folly  of  which  he  was  capable.  I 
perceived  Mary's  name  flung  to  the  four  winds  of 
heaven. 

"You  idiot,  Philip!"  I  cried.  "I  don't  know  your 
sister.  I've  not  seen  her — scarcely  seen  her  for  years. 

181 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

I  ask  you — I  ask  you  for  a  match-box  or  something 
and  you  hit  me." 

"If  you  dare  to  speak  to  her !" 

"You  fool!"  I  cried,  going  nearer  to  him  and  trying 
to  make  him  understand.  But  he  winced  and  recoiled 
defensively.  "I'm  sorry,"  I  said  to  the  commissionaire 
who  was  intervening.  "Lord  Maxton  has  made  a 
mistake." 

"Is  he  a  member?"  said  someone  in  the  background, 
and  somebody  else  suggested  calling  a  policeman.  I  per- 
ceived that  only  a  prompt  retreat  would  save  the  whole 
story  of  our  quarrel  from  the  newspapers.  So  far  as  I 
could  see  nobody  knew  me  there  except  Philip.  I  had 
to  take  the  risks  of  his  behavior;  manifestly  I  couldn't 
control  it.  I  made  no  further  attempt  to  explain  anything 
to  anybody.  Everyone  was  a  little  too  perplexed  for 
prompt  action,  and  so  the  advantage  in  that  matter  lay 
with  me.  I  walked  through  the  door,  and  with  what  I 
imagined  to  be  an  appearance  of  the  utmost  serenity  down 
the  steps.  I  noted  an  ascending  member  glance  at  me 
with  an  expression  of  exceptional  interest,  but  it  was  only 
after  I  had  traversed  the  length  of  Pall  Mall  that  I  realized 
that  my  lip  and  the  corner  of  my  nostril  were  both  bleed- 
ing profusely.  I  called  a  cab  when  I  discovered  my  hand- 
kerchief scarle,t,  and  retreated  to  my  flat  and  cold  ablu- 
tions. Then  I  sat  down  to  write  a  letter  to  Tarvrille,  with 
a  clamorous  "Urgent,  Please  forward  if  away"  above  the 
address,  and  tell  him  at  least  to  suppress  Philip.  But 
within  the  club  that  blockhead,  thinking  of  nothing  but 
the  appearances  of  our  fight  and  his  own  credit,  was 
varying  his  assertion  that  he  had  thrashed  me,  with  de- 
nunciations of  me  as  a  "blackguard,"  and  giving  half  a 

182 


LADY   MARY  JUSTIN  ' 

dozen  men  a  highly  colored,  improvised,  and  altogether 
improbable  account  of  my  relentless  pursuit  and  persecu- 
tion of  Lady  Mary  Justin,  and  how  she  had  left  London 
to  avoid  me.  They  listened,  no  doubt,  with  extreme 
avidity.  The  matrimonial  relations  of  the  Justins  had 
long  been  a  matter  for  speculative  minds. 

And  while  Philip  was  doing  this,  Guy,  away  in  Mayo 
still,  was  writing  a  tender,  trusting,  and  all  too  explicit 
letter  to  a  well-known  and  extremely  impatient  lady  in 
London  to  account  for  his  continued  absence  from  her 
house.  "So  that  is  it!"  said  the  lady,  reading,  and  was 
at  least  in  the  enviable  position  of  one  who  had  confirma- 
tory facts  to  impart.  .  .  . 

And  so  quite  suddenly  the  masks  were  off  our  situation 
and  we  were  open  to  an  impertinent  world.  For  some 
days  I  did  not  realize  what  had  happened,  and  lived  in 
hope  that  Philip  had  been  willing  and  able  to  cover  his 
lapse.  I  went  about  with  my  preoccupation  still,  as  I 
imagined,  concealed,  and  with  an  increasing  number  of 
typed  letters  from  my  private  enquiry  agent  in  my  pocket 
containing  inaccurate  and  worthless  information  about 
the  movements  of  Justin,  which  appeared  to  have  been 
culled  for  the  most  part  from  a  communicative  young 
policeman  stationed  at  the  corner  nearest  to  the  Justins' 
house,  or  expanded  from  Who's  Who  and  other  kindred 
works  of  reference.  The  second  letter,  I  remember,  gave 
some  particulars  about  the  financial  position  of  the  younger 
men,  and  added  that  Justin's  credit  with  the  west-end 
tradesmen  was  "limitless,"  points  upon  which  I  had  no 
sort  of  curiosity  whatever.  .  .  . 

I  suppose  a  couple  of  hundred  people  in  London  knew 
before  I  did  that  Lady  Mary  Justin  had  been  carried  off 

183 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

to  Ireland  and  practically  imprisoned  there  by  her  hus- 
band because  I  was  her  lover.  The  thing  reached  me  at 
last  through  little  Fred  Riddling,  who  came  to  my  rooms 
in  the  morning  while  I  was  sitting  over  my  breakfast. 
"  Stratton !"  said  he,  "what  is  all  this  story  of  your  shaking 
Justin  by  the  collar,  and  threatening  to  kill  him  if  he 
didn't  give  up  his  wife  to  you?  And  why  do  you  want 
to  fight  a  duel  with  Maxton?  What's  it  all  about? 
Fire-eater  you  must  be !  I  stood  up  for  you  as  well  as  I 
could,  but  I  heard  you  abused  for  a  solid  hour  last  night, 
and  there  was  a  chap  there  simply  squirting  out  facts  and 
dates  and  names.  Got  it  all.  ...  What  have  you  been 
up  to?" 

He  stood  on  my  hearthrug  with  an  air  of  having  called 
for  an  explanation  to  which  he  was  entitled,  and  he  very 
nearly  got  one.  But  I  just  had  some  scraps  of  reserve 
left,  and  they  saved  me.  "Tell  me  first,"  I  said,  delay- 
ing myself  with  the  lighting  of  a  cigarette,  "the  particulars 
...  as  you  heard  them." 

Riddling  embarked  upon  a  descriptive  sketch,  and  I 
got  a  minute  or  so  to  think. 

"Go  on,"  I  said  with  a  note  of  irony,  when  he  paused. 
"Go  on.  Tell  me  some  more.  Where  did  you  say  they 
have  taken  her;  let  us  have  it  right." 

By  the  time  his  little  store  had  run  out  I  knew  exactly 
what  to  do  with  him.  "Riddling,"  said  I,  and  stood  up 
beside  him  suddenly  and  dropped  my  hand  with  a  little 
added  weight  upon  his  shoulder,  "Riddling,  do  you  know 
the  only  right  and  proper  thing  to  do  when  you  hear 
scandal  about  a  friend?" 

"Come  straight  to  him,"  said  Riddling  virtuously,  "as 
I  have  done." 

184 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

"No.  Say  you  don't  believe  it.  Ask  the  scandal- 
monger how  he  knows  and  insist  on  his  telling  you — insist. 
And  if  he  won't — be  very,  very  rude  to  him.  Insist  up  to 
the  quarrelling  point.  Now  who  were  those  people?" 

"  Well— that's  a  bit  stiff.  .  .  .  One  chap  I  didn't  know 
at  all." 

"You  should  have  pulled  him  up  and  insisted  upon 
knowing  who  he  was,  and  what  right  he  had  to  lie  about 
me.  For  it's  lying,  Riddling.  Listen!  It  isn't  true 
that  I'm  besieging  Lady  Mary  Justin.  So  far  from 
besieging  her  I  didn't  even  know  where  she  was  until 
you  told  me.  Justin  is  a  neighbor  of  my  father's  and  a 
friend  of  mine.  I  had  tea  with  him  and  his  wife  not  a 
month  ago.  I  had  tea  with  them  together.  I  knew  they 
were  going  away,  but  it  was  a  matter  of  such  slight  im- 
portance to  me,  such  slight  importance" — I  impressed 
this  on  his  collarbone — "that  I  was  left  with  the  idea 
that  they  were  going  to  the  south  of  France.  I  believe 
they  are  in  the  south  of  France.  And  there  you  are. 
I'm  sorry  to  spoil  sport,  but  that's  the  bleak  unromantic 
truth  of  the  matter." 

"You  mean  to  say  that  there  is  nothing  in  it  all?" 

"Nothing." 

He  was  atrociously  disappointed.     "But  everybody," 
he  said,  "everybody  has  got  something." 
'    "Somebody  will  get  a  slander  case  if  this  goes  on.     I 
don't  care  what  they've  got." 

"Good  Lord!"  he  said,  and  stared  at  the  rug.     "You'll 

take  your  oath "     He  glanced  up  and  met  my  eye. 

"Oh,  of  course  it's  all  right  what  you  say."  He  was 
profoundly  perplexed.  He  reflected.  "But  then,  I  say 
Stratton,  why  did  you  go  for  Maxton  at  Blake's?  That 

185 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

I  had  from  an  eye-witness.    You  can't  deny  a  scrap  like 
that — in  broad  daylight.     Why  did  you  do  that?1' 

"Oh  that's  it,"  said  I.  "I  begin  to  have  glimmerings. 
There's  a  little  matter  between  myself  and  Maxton.  .  .  ." 
I  found  it  a  little  difficult  to  improvise  a  plausible  story. 

"But  he  said  it  was  his  sister,"  persisted  Riddlings. 
"He  said  so  afterwards,  in  the  club." 

"Maxton,"  said  I,  losing  my  temper,  "is  a  fool  and  a 
knave  and  a  liar.  His  sister  indeed!  Lady  Mary! 
If  he  can't  leave  his  sister  out  of  this  business  I'll  break 
every  bone  of  his  body."  ...  I  perceived  my  temper  was 
undoing  me.  I  invented  rapidly  but  thinly.  "As  a 
matter  of  fact,  Riddling,  it's  quite  another  sort  of  lady 
has  set  us  by  the  ears." 

Riddling  stuck  his  chin  out,  tucked  in  the  corners  of 
his  mouth,  made  round  eyes  at  the  breakfast  things  and, 
hands  in  pockets,  rocked  from  heels  to  toes  and  from  toes 
to  heels.  "  I  see  Stratton,  yes,  I  see.  Yes,  all  this  makes 
it  very  plain,  of  course.  Very  plain.  .  .  .  Stupid  thing, 
scandal  is.  .  .  .  Thanks!  no,  I  won't  have  a  cigarette." 

And  he  left  me  presently  with  an  uncomfortable  sense 
that  he  did  see,  and  didn't  for  one  moment  intend  to 
restrain  his  considerable  histrionic  skill  in  handing  on  his 
vision  to  others.  For  some  moments  I  stood  savoring 
this  all  too  manifest  possibility,  and  then  my  thoughts 
went  swirling  into  another  channel.  At  last  the  curtain 
was  pierced.  I  was  no  longer  helplessly  in  the  dark.  I 
got  out  my  Bradshaw,  and  sat  with  the  map  spread  out 
over  the  breakfast  things  studying  the  routes  to  Mayo. 
Then  I  rang  for  Williams,  the  man  I  shared  with  the, two 
adjacent  flat-holders,  and  told  him  to  pack  my  kit-bag 
because  I  was  suddenly  called  away. 

186 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

§13 

Many  of  the  particulars  of  my  journey  to  Ireland  have 
faded  out  of  my  mind  altogether.  I  remember  most 
distinctly  my  mood  of  grim  elation  that  at  last  I  had  to 
deal  with  accessible  persons  again.  .  .  . 

The  weather  was  windy  and  violent,  and  I  was  sea- 
sick for  most  of  the  crossing,  and  very  tired  and  exhausted 
when  I  landed.  Williams  had  thought  of  my  thick  over- 
coat and  loaded  me  with  wraps  and  rugs,  and  I  sat  in  the 
corner  of  a  compartment  in  that  state  of  mental  and 
bodily  fatigue  that  presses  on  the  brows  like  a  painless 
headache.  I  got  to  some  little  junction  at  last  where  I  had 
to  wait  an  hour  for  a  branch-line  train.  I  tasted  all  the 
bitterness  of  Irish  hospitality,  and  such  coffee  as  Ireland 
alone  can  produce.  Then  I  went  on  to  a  station  called 
Clumber  or  Clumboye,  or  some  such  name,  and  thence 
after  some  difficulty  I  got  a  car  for  my  destination.  It 
was  a  wretched  car  in  which  hens  had  been  roosting,  and 
it  was  drawn  by  a  steaming  horse  that  had  sores  under  its 
mended  harness. 

An  immense  wet  wind  was  blowing  as  we  came  over  the 
big  hill  that  lies  to  the  south  of  Mirk.  Everything  was 
wet,  the  hillside  above  me  was  either  intensely  green  sod- 
den turf  or  great  streaming  slabs  of  limestone,  seaward 
was  a  rocky  headland,  a  ruin  of  a  beehive* shape,  and 
beyond  a  vast  waste  of  tumbling  waters  unlit  by  any  sun. 
Not  a  tree  broke  that  melancholy  wilderness,  nor  any 
living  thing  but  ourselves.  The  horse  went  stumblingly 
under  the  incessant  stimulation  of  the  driver's  lash  and 
tongue.  .  .  . 

"Yonder  it  is/'  said  my  man,  pointing  with  his  whip, 

187 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

and  I  twisted  round  to  see  over  his  shoulder,  not  the 
Rhine-like  castle  I  had  expected,  but  a  long  low  house  of 
stone  upon  a  headland,  backed  by  a  distant  mountain  that 
vanished  in  a  wild  driven  storm  of  rain  as  I  looked. 
But  at  the  sight  of  Mirk  my  lassitude  passed,  my  nerves 
tightened,  and  my  will  began  to  march  again.  Now, 
thought  I,  we  bring  things  to  an  issue.  Now  we  come  to 
something  personal  and  definite.  The  vagueness  is  at  an 
end.  I  kept  my  eyes  upon  the  place,  and  thought  it  more 
and  more  like  a  prison  as  we  drew  nearer.  Perhaps  from 
that  window  Mary  was  looking  for  me  now.  Had  she 
wondered  why  I  did  not  come  to  her  before?  Now  at 
any  rate  I  had  found  her.  I  sprang  off  the  car,  found  a 
bell-handle,  and  set  the  house  jangling. 

The  door  opened,  and  a  little  old  man  appeared  with 
his  fingers  thrust  inside  his  collar  as  though  he  were 
struggling  against  strangulation.  He  regarded  me  for  a 
second,  and  spoke  before  I  could  speak. 

"What  might  you  be  wanting?"  said  he,  as  if  he  had 
an  answer  ready. 

"I  want  to  see  Lady  Mary  Justin,"  I  said. 

"You  can't,"  he  said.     "She's  gone." 

"Gone!" 

"The  day  before  yesterday  she  went  to  London. 
You'll  have  to  be  getting  back  there." 

"She's  gone  to  London." 

"No  less." 

"Willingly?" 

The  little  old  man  struggled  with  his  collar.  "Anyone 
would  go  willingly,"  he  said,  and  seemed  to  await  my 
further  commands.  He  eyed  me  obliquely  with  a  shadow 
of  malice  in  his  eyes. 

188 


LADY    MARY   JUSTIN 

It  was  then  my  heart  failed,  and  I  knew  that  we  lovers 
were  beaten.  I  turned  from  the  door  without  another 
word  to  the  janitor.  "  Back,"  said  I  to  my  driver,  and  got 
•  up  behind  him. 

But  it  is  one  thing  to  decide  to  go  back,  and  another 
to  do  it.  At  the  little  station  I  studied  time-tables,  and 
I  could  not  get  to  England  again  without  a  delay  of  half  a 
day.  Somewhere  I  must  wait.  I  did  not  want  to  wait 
where  there  was  any  concourse  of  people.  I  decided  to 
stay  in  the  inn  by  the  station  for  the  intervening  six  hours, 
and  get  some  sleep  before  I  started  upon  my  return,  but 
when  I  saw  the  bedroom  I  changed  my  plan  and  went 
down  out  of  the  village  by  a  steep  road  towards  the  shore. 
I  wandered  down  through  the  rain  and  spindrift  to  the 
very  edge  of  the  sea,  and  there  found  a  corner  among  the 
rocks  a  little  sheltered  from  the  wind,  and  sat,  inert  and 
wretched;  my  lips  salt,  my  hair  stiff  with  salt,  and  my 
body  wet  and  cold;  a  miserable  defeated  man.  For  I 
had  now  an  irrational  and  entirely  overwhelming  convic- 
tion of  defeat.  I  saw  as  if  I  ought  always  to  have  seen  that 
I  had  been  pursuing  a  phantom  of  hopeless  happiness,  that 
my  dream  of  ever :  possessing  Mary  again  was  fantastic 
and  foolish,  and  that  I  had  expended  all  my  strength  in 
vain.  Over  me  triumphed  a  law  and  tradition  more 
towering  than  those  cliffs  and  stronger  than  those  waves. 
I  was  overwhelmed  by  a  sense  of  human  weakness,  of  the 
infinite  feebleness  of  the  individual  man  against  wind 
and  wave  and  the  stress  of  tradition  and  the  ancient  usages 
of  mankind.  "  We  must  submit,"  I  whispered,  crouching 
close,  "  we  must  submit."  ... 

Far  as  the  eye  could  reach  the  waves  followed  one  an- 
other in  long  unhurrying  lines,  an  inexhaustible  succession, 
13  189 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

rolling,  hissing,  breaking,  and  tossing  white  manes  of  foam, 
to  gather  at  last  for  a  crowning  effort  and  break  thunder- 
ously, squirting  foam  two  hundred  feet  up  the  streaming 
faces  of  the  cliffs.  The  wind  tore  and  tugged  at  me,  and 
wind  and  water  made  together  a  clamor  as  though  all  the 
evil  voices  in  the  world,  all  the  violent  passions  and  all 
the  hasty  judgments  were  seeking  a  hearing  above  the 
more  elemental  uproar.  .  .  . 


And  while  I  was  in  this  phase  of  fatigue  and  despair 
in  Mayo,  the  scene  was  laid  and  all  the  other  actors 
were  waiting  for  the  last  act  of  my  defeat  in  London. 
I  came  back  to  find  two  letters  from  Mary  and  a  little 
accumulation  of  telegrams  and  notes,  one  written  in  my 
flat,  from  Tarvrille. 

Mary's  letters  were  neither  of  them  very  long,  and  full 
of  a  new-born  despair.  She  had  not  realized  how  great 
were  the  forces  against  her  and  against  us  both.  She 
let  fall  a  phrase  that  suggested  she  was  ill.  She  had 
given  in,  she  said,  to  save  herself  and  myself  and  others 
from  the  shame  and  ruin  of  a  divorce,  and  I  must  give  in 
too.  We  had  to  agree  not  to  meet  or  communicate  for 
three  years,  and  I  was  to  go  out  of  England.  She  prayed 
me  to  accept  this.  She  knew,  she  said,  she  seemed  to 
desert  me,  but  I  did  not  know  everything, — I  did  not 
know  everything, — I  must  agree;  she  could  not  come  with 
me;  it  was  impossible.  Now  certainly  it  was  impossible. 
She  had  been  weak,  but  I  did  not  know  all.  If  I  knew 
all  I  should  be  the  readier  to  understand  and  forgive  her, 

190 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

but  it  was  part  of  the  conditions  that  I  could  not  know 
all.  Justin  had  been  generous,  in  his  way.  .  .  .  Justin 
had  everything  in  his  hands,  the  whole  world  was  behind 
him  against  us,  and  I  must  give  in.  Those  letters  had  a 
quality  I  had  never  before  met  in  her,  they  were  broken- 
spirited.  I  could  not  understand  them  fully,  and  they 
left  me  perplexed,  with  a  strong  desire  to  see  her,  to 
question  her,  to  learn  more  fully  what  this  change  in  her 
might  mean. 

Tarvrille's  notes  recorded  his  repeated  attempts  to  see 
me,  I  felt  that  he  alone  was  capable  of  clearing  up  things 
for  me,  and  I  went  out  again  at  once  and  telegraphed 
to  him  for  an  appointment. 

He  wired  to  me  from  that  same  house  in  Mayfair  in 
which  I  had  first  met  Mary  after  my  return.  He  asked 
me  to  come  to  him  in  the  afternoon,  and  thither  I  went 
through  a  November  fog,  and  found  him  in  the  drawing- 
room  that  had  the  plate  glass  above  the  fireplace.  But 
now  he  was  vacating  the  house,  and  everything  was 
already  covered  up,  the  pictures  and  their  frames  were 
under  holland,  the  fine  furniture  all  in  covers  of  faded 
stuff,  the  chandeliers  and  statues  wrapped  up,  the  carpets 
rolled  out  of  the  way.  Even  the  window-curtains  were 
tucked  into  wrappers,  and  the  blinds,  except  one  he  had 
raised,  drawn  down.  He  greeted  me  and  apologized  for 
the  cold  inhospitality  of  the  house.  "It  was  convenient 
here,"  he  said.  "I  came  here  to  clear  out  my  papers 
and  boxes.  And  there's  no  chance  of  interruptions. " 

He  went  and  stood  before  the  empty  fireplace,  and 
plunged  into  the  middle  of  the  matter. 

"You  know,  my  dear  Stratton,  in  this  confounded 
business  my  heart's  with  you.  It  has  been  all  along.  If 

191 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

I  could  have  seen  a  clear  chance  before  you — for  you  and 
Mary  to  get  away— and  make  any  kind  of  life  of  it — 
though  she's  my  cousin — I'd  have  helped  you.     Indeed 
I  would.    But  there's  no  sort  of  chance — not  the  ghost  , 
of  a  chance.  .  .  ." 

He  began  to  explain  very  fully,  quite  incontrovertibly, 
that  entire  absence  of  any  chance  for  Mary  and  myself 
together.  He  argued  to  the  converted.  "You  know  as 
well  as  I  do  what  that  romantic  flight  abroad,  that 
Ouidaesque  casa  in  some  secluded  valley,  comes  to  in 
reality.  All  round  Florence  there's  no  end  of  such 
scandalous  people,  I've  been  among  them,  the  nine  circles 
of  the  repenting  scandalous,  all  cutting  one  another." 

"I  agree,"  I  said.     "And  yet " 

"What?" 

"We  could  have  come  back." 

Tarvrille  paused,  and  then  leant  forward.     "No." 

"But  people  have  done  so.  It  would  have  been  a  clean 
sort  of  divorce." 

"You  don't  understand  Justin.  Justin  would  ruin 
you.  If  you  were  to  take  Mary  away.  .  .  .  He's  a  queer 
little  man.  Everything  is  in  his  hands.  Everything  al- 
ways is  in  the  husband's  hands  in  these  affairs.  If  he 
chooses.  And  keeps  himself  in  the  right.  For  an  injured 
husband  the  law  sanctifies  revenge.  .  .  . 

"And  you  see,  you've  got  to  take  Justin's  terms. 
He's  changed.  He  didn't  at  first  fully  realize.  He  feels 
—cheated.  We've  had  to  persuade  him.  There's  a  case 
for  Justin,  you  know.  He's  had  to  stand — a  lot.  I 
don't  wonder  at  his  going  stiff  at  last.  No  doubt  it's  hard 
for  you  to  see  that.  But  you  have  to  see  it.  You've  got 
to  go  away  as  he  requires— three  years  out  of  England, 

192 


LADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

you've  got  to  promise  not  to  correspond,  not  to  meet 
afterwards ' ' 

"It's  so  extravagant  a  separation." 

"The  alternative  is — not  for  you  to  have  Mary,  but 
for  you  two  to  be  flung  into  the  ditch  together — that's 
what  it  comes  to,  Stratton.  Justin's  got  his  case.  He's 
set  like — steel.  You're  up  against  the  law,  up  against 
social  tradition,  up  against  money — any  one  of  those  a 
man  may  fight,  but  not  all  three.  And  she's  ill,  Stratton. 
You  owe  her  consideration.  You  of  all  people.  That's 
no  got-up  story;  she's  truly  ill  and  broken.  She  can  no 
longer  fly  with  you  and  fight  with  you,  travel  in  uncom- 
fortable trains,  stay  in  horrible  little  inns.  You  don't 
understand.  The  edge  is  off  her  pluck,  Stratton." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  I  asked,  and  questioned  his  face. 

"Just  exactly  what  I  say." 

A  gleam  of  understanding  came  to  me.  .  .  . 

"Why  can't  I  see  her?"  I  broke  in,  with  my  voice  full 
of  misery  and  anger.  ' '  Why  can't  I  see  her  ?  As  if  seeing 
her  once  more  could  matter  so  very  greatly  now!" 

He  appeared  to  weigh  something  in  his  mind.  "You 
can't,"  he  said. 

"How  do  I  know  that  she's  not  being  told  some  story 
of  my  abandonment  of  her?  How  do  I  know  she  isn't 
being  led  to  believe]  I  no  longer  want  her  to  come  to 
me?" 

"She  isn't,"  said  Tarvrille,  still  with  that  arrested 
judicial  note  in  his  voice.  "You  had  her  letters^"  he 
said. 

"Two." 

"Yes.     Didn't  they  speak?" 

"I  want  to  see  her.  Damn  it,  Tarvrille!"  I  cried  with 

193 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

sudden  tears  in  my  smarting  eyes.  "Let  her  send  me 

away.  This  isn't Not  treating  us  like  human 

beings." 

"  Women,"  said  Tarvrille  and  looked  at  his  boot  toes, 
"are  different  from  men.  You  see,  Stratton " 

He  paused.  "You  always  strike  me,  Stratton,  as  not 
realizing  that  women  are  weak  things.  We've  got  to 
take  care  of  them.  You  don't  seem  to  feel  that  as  I  do. 
Their  moods — fluctuate — more  than  ours  do.  If  you 
hold  'em  to  what  they  say  in  the  same  way  you  hold  a 
man — it  isn't  fair.  .  .  ." 

He  halted  as  though  he  awaited  my  assent  to  that 
proposition. 

"If  you  were  to  meet  Mary  now,  you  see,  and  if  you 
were  to  say  to  her,  come — come  and  we'll  jump  down 
Etna  together,  and  you  said  it  in  the  proper  voice  and 
with  the  proper  force,  she'd  do  it,  Stratton.  You  know 
that.  Any  man  knows  a  thing  like  that.  And  she 
wouldn't  want  to  do  it.  .  .  ." 

"You  mean  that's  why  I  can't  see  her." 

"That's  why  you  can't  see  her." 

"Because  we'd  become — dramatic." 

"Because  you'd  become — romantic  and  uncivilized." 

"Well,"  I  said  sullenly,  realizing  the  bargain  we  were 
making,  "I  won't." 

"You  won't  make  any  appeal?" 

"No." 

He  made  no  answer,  and  I  looked  up  to  discover  him 
glancing  over  his  shoulder  through  the  great  glass  window 
into  the  other  room.  I  stood  up  very  quickly,  and  there 
in  the  further  apartment  were  Guy  and  Mary,  standing 
side  by  side.  Our  eyes  met,  and  she  came  forward 

194 


L'ADY   MARY   JUSTIN 

towards  the  window  impulsively,  and  paused,  with  that 
unpitying  pane  between  us.  ... 

Then  Guy  was  opening  the  door  for  her  and  she  stood 
in  the  doorway.  She  was  in  dark  furs  wrapped  about  her, 
but  in  the  instant  I  could  see  how  ill  she  was  and  how 
broken.  She  came  a  step  or  so  towards  me  and  then 
stopped  short,  and  so  we  stood,  shyly  and  awkwardly 
under  Guy  and  Tarvrille's  eyes,  two  yards  apart.  "You 
see,"  she  said,  and  stopped  lamely. 

"You  and  I,"  I  said,  "have  to  part,  Mary.  We 

We  are  beaten.  Is  that  so?" 

"Stephen,  there  is  nothing  for  us  to  do.  We've  of- 
fended. We  broke  the  rules.  We  have  to  pay." 

"By  parting?" 

"What  else  is  there  to  do?" 

"No,"  I  said.     "There's  nothing  else."  .  .  . 

"I  tried,"  she  said,  "that  you  shouldn't  be  sent  from 
England." 

"That's  a  detail,"  I  answered. 

"But  your  politics — your  work?" 

"That  does  not  matter.  The  great  thing  is  that  you 
are  ill  and  unhappy — that  I  can't  help  you.  I  can't 
do  anything.  ...  I'd  go  anywhere  ...  to  save  you. 
.  .  .  All  I  can  do,  I  suppose,  is  to  part  like  this  and  go." 

"I  shan't  be — altogether  unhappy.  And  I  shall  think 
of  you " 

She  paused,  and  we  stood  facing  one  another,  tongue- 
tied.  There  was  only  one  word  more  to  say,  and  neither 
of  us  would  say  it  for  a  moment. 

"Good-bye,"  she  whispered  at  last,  and  then,  "Don't 
think  I  deserted  you,  Stephen  my  dear.  Don't  think 
ill  of  me.  I  couldn't  come — I  couldn't  come  to  you," 

195 


THE    PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

and  suddenly  her  face  changed  slowly  and  she  began  to 
weep,  my  fearless  playmate  whom  I  had  never  seen  weep- 
ing before;  she  began  to  weep  as  an  unhappy  child  might 
weep. 

"Oh  my  Mary!"  I  cried,  weeping  also,  and  held  out 
my  arms,  and  we  clung  together  and  kissed  with  tear-wet 
faces. 

"No,"  cried  Guy  belatedly,  "we  promised  Justin!" 

But  Tarvrille  restrained  his  forbidding  arm,  and  then 
after  a  second's  interval  put  a  hand  on  my  shoulder. 
"Come,  "he  said.  .  .  . 

And  so  it  was  Mary  and  I  parted  from  one  another. 


CHAPTER  THE   SEVENTH 
BEGINNING  AGAIN 


IN  operas  and  romances  one  goes  from  such  a  parting 
in  a  splendid  dignity  of  gloom.  But  I  am  no  hero,  and 
I  went  down  the  big  staircase  of  Tarvrille's  house  the 
empty  shuck  of  an  abandoned  desire.  I  was  acutely 
ashamed  of  my  recent  tears.  In  the  centre  of  the  hall 
was  a  marble  figure  swathed  about  with  yellow  muslin. 
"On  account  of  the  flies,"  I  said,  breaking  our  silence. 

My  words  were  far  too  unexpected  for  Tarvrille  to 
understand.  "The  flies,"  I  repeated  with  an  air  of 
explanation. 

"You're  sure  shell  be  all  right?"  I  said  abruptly. 

"You've  done  the  best  thing  you  can  for  her." 

"I  suppose  I  have.  I  have  to  go."  And  then  I  saw 
ahead  of  me  a  world  full  of  the  tiresome  need  of  decisions 
and  arrangements  and  empty  of  all  interest.  "Where 
the  devil  am  I  to  go,  Tarvrille?  I  can't  even  get  out  of 
things  altogether.  ..."  . 

And  then  with  a  fresh  realization  of  painful  difficulties 
ahead:  "I  have  to  tell  this  to  my  father.  I've  got  to 
explain And  he  thought — he  expected " 

Tarvrille  opened  the  half  of  the  heavy  front  door 

197 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

for  me,  hesitated,  and  came  down  the  broad  steps  into 
the  chilly  grey  street  and  a  few  yards  along  the  pavement 
with  me.  He  wanted  to  say  something  that  he  found 
difficult  to  say.  When  at  last  he  did  find  words  they  were 
quite  ridiculous  in  substance,  and  yet  at  the  time  I  took 
them  as  gravely  as  he  intended  them.  "It's  no  good 
quoting  Marcus  Aurelius,"  said  Tarvrille,  "to  a  chap  with 
his  finger  in  the  crack  of  a  door." 

"I  suppose  it  isn't,"  I  said. 

"One  doesn't  want  to  be  a  flatulent  ass  of  course,"  said 
Tarvrille,  "still " 

He  resumed  with  an  air  of  plunging.  "It  will  sound 
just  rot  to  you  now,  Stratton,  but  after  all  it  conies  to 
this.  Behind  us  is  a — situation — with  half-a-dozen  par- 
ticular persons.  Out  here — I  mean  here  round  the  world 
— before  you've  done  with  them — there's  a  thousand 
million  people — men  and  women." 

"Oh!  what  does  that  matter  to  me?"  said  I. 

"Everything,"  said  Tarvrille.  "At  least— it  ought 
to." 

He  stopped  and  held  out  his  hand.  "Good-bye, 
Stratton — good  luck  to  you !  Good-bye. ' ' 

1 '  Yes, ' '  I  said.     ' '  Good-bye. ' ' 

I  turned  away  from  him.  The  image  of  Mary  crying 
as  a  child  cries  suddenly  blinded  me  and  blotted  out  the 
world. 


9  I  want  to  give  you  as  clearly  as  I  can  some  impres- 
sion of  the  mental  states  that  followed  this  passion  and 
this  collapse.  It  seems  to  me  one  of  the  most  extraor- 
dinary aspects  of  all  that  literature  of  speculative  attack 

198 


BEGINNING  AGAIN 

which  is  called  psychology,  that  there  is  no  name  and  no 
description  at  all  of  most  of  the  mental  states  that  make 
up  life.  Psychology,  like  sociology,  is  still  largely  in  the 
scholastic  stage,  it  is  ignorant  and  intellectual,  a  happy 
refuge  for  the  lazy  industry  of  pedants;  instead  of  ex- 
perience and  accurate  description  and  analysis  it  begins 
with  the  rash  assumption  of  elements  and  starts  out 
upon  ridiculous  syntheses.  Who  with  a  sick  soul  would 
dream  of  going  to  a  psychologist?  .  .  . 

Now  here  was  I  with  a  mind  sore  and  inflamed.  I  did 
not  clearly  understand  what  had  happened  to  me.  I  had 
blundered,  offended,  entangled  myself;  and  I  had  no  more 
conception  than  a  beast  in  a  bog  what  it  was  had  got  me, 
or  the  method  or  even  the  need  of  escape.  The  desires 
and  passionate  excitements,  the  anger  and  stress  and 
Strain  and  suspicion  of  the  last  few  months  had  worn 
deep  grooves  in  my  brain,  channels  without  end  or  issue, 
out  of  which  it  seemed  impossible  to  keep  my  thoughts. 
I  had  done  dishonorable  things,  told  lies,  abused  the  con- 
fidence of  a  friend.  I  kept  wrestling  with  these  intolerable 
facts.  If  some  momentary  distraction  released  me  for  a 
time,  back  I  would  fall  presently  before  I  knew  what  was 
happening,  and  find  myself  scheming  once  more  to  reverse 
the  accomplished,  or  eloquently  restating  things  already 
intolerably  overdiscussed  in  my  mind,  justifying  the  un- 
justifiable or  avenging  defeat.  I  would  dream  again  and 
again  of  some  tremendous  appeal  to  Mary,  some  violent 
return  and  attack  upon  the  situation.  .  .  . 

One  very  great  factor  in  my  mental  and  moral  distress! 

was  the  uncertain  values  of  nearly  every  aspect  of  the  casea 

-  There  is   an  invincible   sense   of   wild  lightness   aboutj 

passionate  love  that  no  reasoning  and  no  training  will« 

199 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

ever  altogether  repudiate;  I  had  a  persuasion  that  out  of 
that  I  would  presently  extract  a  magic  to  excuse  my 
deceits  and  treacheries  and  assuage  my  smarting  shame. 
And  round  these  deep  central  preoccupations  were  others 
of  acute  exasperation  and  hatred  towards  secondary  peo- 
ple. There  had  been  interventions,  judgments  upon  in- 
sufficient evidence,  comments,  and  often  quite  justifiable 
comments,  that  had  filled  me  with  an  extraordinary 
savagery  of  resentment. 

I  had  a  persuasion,  illogical  but  invincible,  that  I  was 
still  entitled  to  all  the  respect  due  to  a  man  of  unblemished 
honor.  I  clung  fiercely  to  the  idea  that  to  do  dishonor- 
able things  isn't  necessarily  to  be  dishonorable.  .  .  .  This 
state  of  mind  I  am  describing  is,  I  am  convinced,  the  state 
of  every  man  who  has  involved  himself  in  any  affair  at 
once  questionable  and  passionate.  He  seems  free,  but 
he  is  not  free;  he  is  the  slave  of  the  relentless  paradox 
of  his  position. 

And  we  were  all  of  us  more  or  less  in  deep  grooves  we 
had  made  for  ourselves,  Philip,  Guy,  Justin,  the  friends 
involved,  and  all  in  the  pleasure  of  our  grooves  incapable 
of  tolerance  or  sympathetic  realization.  Even  when  we 
slept,  the  clenched  fist  of  the  attitudes  we  had  assumed 
gave  a  direction  to  our  dreams. 

You  see  the  same  string  of  events  that  had  produced 
all  this  system  of  intense  preoccupations  had  also  severed 
me  from  the  possible  resumption  of  those  wider  interests 
out  of  which  our  intrigue  had  taken  me.  I  had  had  to 
leave  England  and  all  the  political  beginnings  I  had  been 
planning,  and  to  return  to  those  projects  now,  those  now 
impossible  projects,  was  to  fall  back  promptly  into  hope- 
less exasperation.  .  .  . 

200 


\ 


BEGINNING   AGAIN 

And  then  the  longing,  the  longing  that  is  like  a  physical  \ 
pain,  that  hunger  of  the  heart  for  some  one  intolerably 
dear!  The  desire  for  a  voice!  The  arrested  habit  of 
phrasing  one's  thoughts  for  a  hearer  who  will  listen  in 
peace  no  more!  From  that  lonely  distress  even  rage, 
even  the  concoction  of  insult  and  conflict,  was  a  refuge. 
From  that  pitiless  travail  of  emptiness  I  was  ready  to 
turn  desperately  to  any  offer  of  excitement  and  dis- 
traction. 

From  all  those  things  I  was  to  escape  at  last  unhelped, 
but  I  want  you  to  understand  particularly  these  phases 
through  which  I  passed;  it  falls  to  many  and  it  may  fall 
to  you  to  pass  through  such  a  period  of  darkness  and 
malign  obsession.  Make  the  groove  only  a  little  deeper, 
a  little  more  unclimbable,  make  the  temperament  a  little 
less  sanguine,  and  suicide  stares  you  in  the  face.  And 
things  worse  than  suicide,  that  suicide  of  self-respect 
which  turns  men  to  drugs  and  inflammatory  vices  and  the 
utmost  outrageous  defiance  of  the  dreaming  noble  self 
that  has  been  so  despitefully  used.  Into  these  same  inky 
pools  I  have  dipped  my  feet,  where  other  men  have 
drowned.  I  understand  why  they  drown.  And  my 
taste  of  misdeed  and  resentment  has  given  me  just  an 
inkling  of  what  men  must  feel  who  go  to  prison.  I  know 
what  it  is  to  quarrel  with  a  world. 


§3 

My  first  plan  when  I  went  abroad  was  to  change  my 
Harbury  French,  which  was  poor  stuff  and  pedantic, 
into  a  more  colloquial  article,  and  then  go  into  Germany 

201 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

to  do  the  same  thing  with  my  German,  and  then  perhaps 
to  remain  in  Germany  studying  German  social  condi- 
tions— and  the  quality  of  the  German  army.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  when  the  term  of  my  exile  was  over  I  might 
return  to  England  and  re-enter  the  army.  But  all  these 
were  very  anaemic  plans  conceived  by  a  tired  mind,  and  I 
set  about  carrying  them  out  in  a  mood  of  slack  lassitude. 
I  got  to  Paris,  and  in  Paris  I  threw  them  all  overboard 
and  went  to  Switzerland. 

I  remember  very  clearly  how  I  reached  Paris.  I  ar- 
rived about  sunset — I  suppose  at  St.  Lazare  or  the  Gare 
du  Nord — sent  my  luggage  to  the  little  hotel  in  the  Rue 
d'Antin  where  I  had  taken  rooms,  and  dreading  their 
loneliness  decided  to  go  direct  to  a  restaurant  and  dine. 
I  remember  walking  out  into  the  streets  just  as  shops  and 
windows  and  street  lamps  were  beginning  to  light  up, 
and  strolling  circuitously  through  the  clear  bright  stir  of 
the  Parisian  streets  to  find  a  dinner  at  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix. 
Some  day  you  will  know  that  peculiar  sharp  definite  ex- 
citement of  Paris.  All  cities  are  exciting,  and  each  I 
think  in  a  different  way.  And  as  I  walked  down  along 
some  boulevard  towards  the  centre  of  things  I  saw  a  woman 
coming  along  a  side  street  towards  me,  a  woman  with  some- 
thing in  her  body  and  something  in  her  carriage  that  re- 
minded me  acutely  of  Mary.  Her  face  was  downcast, 
and  then  as  we  converged  she  looked  up  at  me,  not  with 
the  meretricious  smile  of  her  class  but  with  a  steadfast, 
friendly  look.  Her  face  seemed  to  me  sane  and  strong. 
I  passed  and  hesitated.  An  extraordinary  impulse  took 
me.  I  turned  back.  I  followed  this  woman  across  the 
road  and  a  little  way  along  the  opposite  pavement.  I  re- 
member I  did  that,  but  I  do  not  remember  clearly  what  was 

202 


BEGINNING   AGAIN 

in  my  mind  at  the  time;  I  think  it  was  a  vague  rush  to- 
wards the  flash  of  companionship  in  her  eyes.  There  I 
had  seemed  to  see  the  glimmer  of  a  refuge  from  my 
desolation.  Then  came  amazement  and  reaction.  I 
turned  about  and  went  on  my  way,  and  saw  her  no  more. 

But  afterwards,  later,  I  went  out  into  the  streets  of 
Paris  bent  upon  finding  that  woman.  She  had  become 
a  hope,  a  desire. 

I  looked  for  her  for  what  seemed  a  long  time,  half 
an  hour  perhaps  or  two  hours.  I  went  along,  peering 
at  the  women's  faces,  through  the  blazing  various  lights, 
the  pools  of  shadowy  darkness,  the  flickering  reflections 
and  transient  glitter,  one  of  a  vast  stream  of  slow-moving 
adventurous  human  beings.  I  crossed  streams  of  traffic, 
paused  at  luminous  kiosks,  became  aware  of  dim  rows  of 
faces  looking  down  upon  me  from  above  the  shining 
enamel  of  the  omnibuses.  .  .  .  My  first  intentness  upon 
one  person,  so  that  I  disregarded  any  distracting  inter- 
vention, gave  place  by  insensible  degrees  to  a  more 
general  apprehension  of  'the  things  about  me.  That 
original  woman  became  as  it  were  diffused.  I  began  to 
look  at  the  men  and  women  sitting  at  the  little  tables 
behind  the  panes  of  the  cafe's,  and  even  on  the  terraces — 
for  the  weather  was  still  dry  and  open.  I  scrutinized  the 
faces  I  passed,  faces  for  the  most  part  animated  by  a  sort 
of  shallow  eagerness.  Many  were  ugly,  many  vile  with 
an  intense  vulgarity,  but  some  in  that  throng  were  pretty, 
some  almost  gracious.  There  was  something  pathetic 
and  appealing  for  me  in  this  great  sweeping  together  of 
people  into  a  little  light,  into  a  weak  community  of  desire 
for  joy  and  eventfulness.  There  came  to  me  a  sense  of 
tolerance,  of  fellowship,  of  participation.  From  an  outer 

203 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

darkness  of  unhappiness  or  at  least  of  joylessness,  they 
had  all  come  hither — as  I  had  come. 

I  was  like  a  creature  that  slips  back  again  towards  some 
deep  waters  out  of  which  long  since  it  came,  into  the 
i  light  and  air.  It  was  as  if  old  forgotten  things,  pre- 
I  natal  experiences,  some  magic  of  ancestral  memories, 
Ijurged  me  to  mingle  again  with  this  unsatisfied  passion 
iifor  life  about  me.  .  .  . 

Then  suddenly  a  wave  of  feeling  between  self -disgust 
and  fear  poured  over  me.  This  vortex  was  drawing  me 
into  deep  and  unknown  things.  ...  I  hailed  a  passing 
fiacre ',  went  straight  to  my  little  hotel,  settled  my  account 
with  the  proprietor,  and  caught  a  night  train  for  Switzer- 
land. 

All  night  long  my  head  ached,  and  I  lay  awake  swaying 
and  jolting  and  listening  to  the  rhythms  of  the  wheels, 
Paris  clean  forgotten  so  soon  as  it  was  left,  and  my 
thoughts  circling  continually  about  Justin  and  Philip 
and  Mary  and  the  things  I  might  have  said  and  done. 


§4 

One  day  late  in  February  I  found  myself  in  Vevey. 
I  had  come  down  with  the  break-up  of  the  weather  from 
Montana,  where  I  had  met  some  Oxford  men  I  knew 
and  had  learned  to  ski.  I  had  made  a  few  of  those  vague 
acquaintances  one  makes  in  a  winter-sport  hotel,  but 
now  all  these  people  were  going  back  to  England  and  I 
was  thrown  back  upon  myself  once  more.  I  was  dull 
and  angry  and  unhappy  still,  full  of  self-reproaches  and 
dreary  indignations,  and  then  very  much  as  the  sky  will 

204 


BEGINNING   AGAIN 

sometimes  break  surprisingly  through  storm  clouds 
there  began  in  me  a  new  series  of  moods.  They  came 
to  me  by  surprise.  One  clear  bright  afternoon  I  sat 
upon  the  wall  that  runs  along  under  the  limes  by  the 
lake  shore,  envying  all  these  people  who  were  going 
back  to  England  and  work  and  usefulness.  I  thought 
of  myself,  of  my  career  spoilt,  my  honor  tarnished,  my 
character  tested  and  found  wanting.  So  far  as  English 
politics  went  my  prospects  had  closed  for  ever.  Even 
after  three  years  it  was  improbable  that  I  should  be 
considered  by  the  party  managers  again.  And  besides, 
it  seemed  to  me  I  was  a  man  crippled.  My  other  self, 
the  mate  and  confirmation  of  my  mind,  had  gone  from 
me.  I  was  no  more  than  a  mutilated  man.  My  life 
was  a  thing  condemned;  I  had  joined  the  ranks  of  loafing, 
morally-limping,  English  exiles. 

I  looked  up.  The  sun  was  setting,  a  warm  glow  fell 
upon  the  dissolving  mountains  of  Savoy  and  upon  the 
shining  mirror  of  the  lake.  The  luminous,  tranquil 
breadth  of  it  caught. me  and  held  me.  "I  am  done  for." 
The  light  upon  the  lake  and  upon  the  mountains,  the 
downward  swoop  of  a  bird  over  the  water  and  something 
in  my  heart,  gave  me  the  lie. 

1 ' What  nonsense!"  I  said,  and  felt  as  if  some  dark 
cloud  that  had  overshadowed  me  had  Seen  thrust  back. 

I  stared  across  at  Savoy  as  though  that  land  had 
spoken.  Why  should  I  let  all  my  life  be  ruled  by  the 
blunders  and  adventures  of  one  short  year  of  adventure? 
Why  should  I  become  the  votary  of  a  train  of  conse- 
quences? What  had  I  been  dreaming  of  all  this  time? 
Over  there  were  gigantic  uplands  I  had  never  seen  and 
trodden;  and  beyond  were  great  plains  and  cities,  and 
14 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

beyond  that  the  sea,  and  so  on,  great  spaces  and  multi- 
tudinous things  all  round  about  the  world.  What  did  the 
things  I  had  done,  the  things  I  had  failed  to  do,  the  hopes 
crushed  out  of  me,  the  tears  and  the  anger,  matter  to 
that?  And  in  some  amazing  way  this  thought  so  took 
possession  of  me  that  the  question  seemed  also  to  carry 
with  it  the  still  more  startling  collateral,  what  then  did 
they  matter  to  me?  "Come  out  of  yourself,"  said  the 
mountains  and  all  the  beauty  of  the  world.  "  Whatever 

I  you  have  done  or  suffered  is  nothing  to  the  inexhaustible 
offer  life  makes  you.  We  are  you,  just  as  much  as  the 
past  is  you." 

It  was  as  though  I  had  forgotten  and  now  remembered 
how  infinitely  multitudinous  life  can  be.  It  was  as  if 
Tarvrille's  neglected  words  to  me  had  sprouted  in  the 
obscurity  of  my  mind  and  borne  fruit.  .  .  . 

I  cannot  explain  how  that  mood  came,  I  am  doing  my 
best  to  describe  it,  and  it  is  not  easy  even  to  describe. 
And  I  fear  that  to  you  who  will  have  had  I  hope  no  ex- 
perience-of  such  shadows  as  I  had  passed  through,  it  is 
impossible  to  convey  its  immense  elation.  ...  I  remember 
once  I  came  in  a  boat  out  of  the  caves  of  Han  after  two 
hours  in  the  darkness,  and  there  was  the  common  daylight 
that  is  nothing  wonderful  at  all,  and  its  brightness  ahead 
there  seemed  like  trumpets  and  cheering,  like  waving 
flags  and  like  the  sunrise.  And  so  it  was  with  this  mood 
of  my  release. 

There  is  a  phrase  of  Peter  E.  Noyes',  that  queer  echo 

of  Emerson  whom  people  are  always  rediscovering  and 

j  forgetting  again,  a  phrase  that  sticks  in  my  mind,—' '  Every 

I  living  soul  is  heir  to  an  empire  and  has  fallen  into  a  pit." 

fit's  an  image  wonderfully  apt  to  describe  my  change  of 

206 


BEGINNING   AGAIN 

mental  attitude,  and  render  the  contrast  between  those 
intensely  passionate  personal  entanglements  that  had 
held  me  tight  and  that  wide  estate  of  life  that  spreads 
about  us  all,  open  to  all  of  us  in  just  the  measure  that  we 
can  scramble  out  of  our  individual  selves — to  a  more 
general  self.  I  seemed  to  be  hanging  there  at  the  brim 
of  my  stale  and  painful  den,  staring  at  the  unthought-of 
greatness  of  the  world,  with  an  unhoped-for  wind  out  of 
heaven  blowing  upon  my  face. 

I  suppose  the  intention  of  the  phrase  "  finding  salva- 
tion," as  religious  people  use  it,  is  very  much  this  expe- 
rience. If  it  is  not  the  same  thing  it  is  something  very 
closely  akin.  It  is  as  if  someone  were  scrambling  out  of  al 
pit  into  a  largeness — a  largeness  that  is  attainable  byj 
every  man  just  in  the  measure  that  he  realizes  it  is  therej 

I  leave  these  fine  discriminations  to  the  theologian. 
I  know  that  I  went  back  to  my  hotel  in  Vevey  with  my 
mind  healed,  with  my  will  restored  to  me,  and  my  ideas 
running  together  into  plans.  And  I  know  that  I  had  come 
out  that  day  a  broken  and  apafljetic  man. 

Jt&r&di,  Js*(jo&&yi 
§5 

The  next  day  my  mood  declined  again;  it  was  as  if 
that  light,  that  sense  of  release  that  had  shone  so  clear 
and  strong  in  my  mind,  had  escaped  me.  I  sought 
earnestly  to  recover  it.  But  I  could  not  do  so,  and  I 
found  my  old  narrow  preoccupations  calling  urgently 
to  me  again. 

I  thought  that  perhaps  I  might  get  back  those  intima- 
tions of  outlook  and  relief  if  I  clambered  alone  into  some 

207 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

high  solitude  and  thought.  I  had  a  crude  attractive  vision 
of  myself  far  above  the  heat  and  noise,  communing  with 
the  sky.  It  was  the  worst  season  for  climbing,  and  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment  I  could  do  nothing  but  get  up  the 
Rochers  de  Naye  on  the  wrong  side,  and  try  and  find 
some  eyrie  that  was  neither  slippery  nor  wet.  I  did  not 
succeed.  In  one  place  I  slipped  down  a  wet  bank  for 
some  yards  and  held  at  last  by  a  root;  if  I  had  slipped 
much  further  I  should  not  be  writing  here  now;  and  I 
came  back  a  very  weary  and  bruised  climber,  without  any 
meditation.  .  .  . 

Three  nights  after  when  I  was  in  bed  I  became  very 
lucidly  awake — it  must  have  been  about  two  or  three  in 
the  morning — and  the  vision  of  life  returned  to  me,  with 
that  same  effect  of  enlargement  and  illumination.  It  was 
as  if  the  great  stillness  that  is  behind  and  above  and 
around  the  world  of  sense  did  in  some  way  communicate 
with  me.  It  bade  me  rouse  my  spirit  and  go  on  with  the 
thoughts  and  purposes  that  had  been  stirring  and  pro- 
liferating in  my  mind  when  I  had  returned  to  England  from 
the  Cape.  "  Dismiss  your  passion."  But  I  urged  that 
that  I  could  not  do;  there  was  the  thought  of  Mary  sub- 
jugated and  weeping,  the  smarting  memory  of  injury  and 
defeat,  the  stains  of  subterfuge  and  discovery,  the  aching 
separation.  No  matter,  the  stillness  answered,  in  the  end 
all  that  is  just  to  temper  you  for  your  greater  uses.  ...  I 
cannot  forget,  I  insisted.  Do  not  forget,  but  for  the 
present  this  leads  you  no  whither;  this  chapter  has  ended; 
dismiss  it  and  turn  t6  those  other  things.  You  are  not 
only  Stephen  Stratton  who  fell  into  adultery;  in  these 
silences  he  is  a  little  thing  and  far  away;  here  and  with 
me  you  are  Man — Everyman — in  this  round  world  in 

208 


BEGINNING  AGAIN 

which  your  lot  has  fallen.  But  Mary,  I  urged,  to  forget 
Mary  is  a  treason,  an  ingratitude,  seeing  that  she  loved 
me.  But  the  stillness  did  not  command  me  to  forget 
her,  but  only  to  turn  my  face  now  to  the  great  work  that 
lies  before  mankind.  And  that  work?  That  work,  so  far 
as  your  share  goes,  is  first  to  understand,  to  solve,  and 
then  to  achieve,  to  work  out  in  the  measure  of  yourself 
that  torment  of  pity  and  that  desire  for  order  and  justice 
which  together  saturate  your  soul.  Go  about  the  world, 
embrue  yourself  with  life,  make  use  of  that  confusedly 
striving  brain  that  I  have  lifted  so  painfully  out  of  the 
deadness  of  matter.  .  .  . 

"But  who  are  you?"  I  cried  out  suddenly  to  the  night. 
"Who  are  you?" 

I  sat  up  on  the  side  of  my  bed.  The  dawn  was  just 
beginning  to  break  up  the  featureless  blackness  of  the 
small  hours.  "This  is  just  some  odd  corner  of  my  brain," 
I  said.  .  .  . 

Yet  -    How  did  I  come  to  have  this  odd  corner  in 

my  brain?    What  is  this  lucid  stillness?  .  .  . 

Ctledr 


§6 

Let  me  tell  you  rather  of  my  thoughts  than  of  my\ 
moods,  for  there  at  least  one  comes  to  something  with 
a  form  that  may  be  drawn  and  a  substance  that  is  measur- 
able; one  ceases  to  struggle  with  things  indefinable  and 
the  effort  to  convey  by  metaphors  and  imaginary  voices 
things  that  are  at  once  bodiless  and  soundless  and  lightless 
and  yet  infinitely  close  and  real.  And  moreover  with  that 
mysterious  and  subtle  change  of  heart  in  me  there  came 

209 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

also  a  change  in  the  quality  and  range  of  my  ideas.  I 
seemed  to  rise  out  of  a  tangle  of  immediacies  and  miscon- 
ceptions, to  see  more  largely  and  more  freely  than  I  had 
ever  done  before. 

I  have  told  how  in  my  muddled  and  wounded  phase  I 
had  snatched  at  the  dull  project  of  improving  my  lan- 
guages, and  under  the  cloak  of  that  spying  a  little  upon 
German  military  arrangements.  Now  my  mind  set  such 
petty  romanticism  on  one  side.  It  had  recovered  the 
strength  to  look  on  the  whole  of  life  and  on  my  place  in 
it.  It  could  resume  the  ideas  that  our  storm  of  passion 
had  for  a  time  thrust  into  the  background  of  my  thoughts. 
I  took  up  again  all  those  broad  generalizations  that  had 
arisen  out  of  my  experiences  in  South  Africa,  and  which 
I  had  been  not  so  much  fitting  into  as  forcing  into  the 
formulae  of  English  politics ;  I  recalled  my  disillusionment 
with  British  Imperialism,  my  vague  but  elaborating  appre- 
hension of  a  profound  conflict  between  enterprise  and 
labor,  a  profound  conflict  between  the  life  of  the  farm 
and  the  life  of  trade  and  finance  and  wholesale  pro- 
duction, as  being  something  far  truer  to  realities  than 
any  of  the  issues  of  party  and  patriotism  upon  which  men 
were  spending  their  lives.  So  far  as  this  rivalry  between 
England  and  Germany,  which  so  obsessed  the  imagina- 
tion of  Europe,  went,  I  found  that  any  faith  I  may  have 
had  in  its  importance  had  simply  fallen  out  of  my  mind. 
As  a  danger  to  civilization,  as  a  conceivable  source  of 
destruction  and  delay,  it  was  a  monstrous  business  enough, 
but  that  in  the  long  run  it  mattered  how  or  when  they 
fought  and  which  won  I  did  not  believe.  In  the  develop- 
ment of  mankind  the  thing  was  of.  far  less  importance 
than  the  struggle  for  Flanders  or  the  wars  of  France  and 

210 


BEGINNING   AGAIN  *i 

Burgundy.  I  was  already  coming  to  see  Europe  as  no 
more  than  the  dog's-eared  corner  of  the  page  of  history, — 
like  most  Europeans  I  had  thought  it-  the  page — and  my 
recovering  mind  was  eager  and  open  to  see  the  world 
beyond  and  form  some  conception  of  the  greater  forces 
that  lay  outside  our  insularities.  What  is  humanity  as 
a  whole  doing?  What  is  the  nature  of  the  world  process 
of  which  I  am  a  part?  Why  should  I  drift  from  cradle  to 
grave  wearing  the  blinkers  of  my  time  and  nationality, 
a  mere  denizen  of  Christendom,  accepting  its  beliefs,  its 
stale  antagonisms,  its  unreal  purposes?  That  perhaps 
had  been  tolerable  while  I  was  still  an  accepted  member 
of  the  little  world  into  which  my  lot  had  fallen,  but  now 
that  I  was  thrust  out  its  absurdity  glared.  For  me  the 
alternative  was  to  be  a  world-man  or  no  man.  I  had 
seemed  sinking  towards  the  latter:  now  I  faced  about  and 
began  to  make  myself  what  I  still  seek  to  make  myself 
to-day,  a  son  of  mankind,  a  conscious  part  of  that  web 
of  effort  and  perplexity  which  wraps  about  our  globe.  .  .  . 
All  this  I  say  came  into  my  mind  as  if  it  were  a  part 
of  that  recovery  of  my  mind  from  its  first  passionate 
abjection.  And  it  seemed  a  simple  and  obvious  part  of 
the  same  conversion  to  realize  that  I  was  ignorant  and 
narrow,  and  that,  too,  in  a  world  which  is  suffering  like 
a  beast  in  a  slime  pit  by  reason  of  ignorance  and  narrow- 
ness of  outlook,  and  that  it  was  my  manifest  work  and 
purpose  to  make  myself  less  ignorant  and  to  see  and  learn 
with  all  my  being.  It  came  to  me  as  a  clear  duty  that  I 
I  should  get  out  of  the  land  of  hotels  and  leisure  and  go 
seeking  the  facts  and  clues  to  human  inter-relationship 
nearer  the  earthy  roots  of  things,  and  I  turned  my  thoughts 
to  India  and  China,  those  vast  enigmas  of  human  accu- 

211 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

mulation,  in  a  spirit  extraordinarily  like  that  of  some 
mystic  who  receives  a  call.  I  felt  I  must  go  to  Asia  and 
from  Asia  perhaps  round  the  world.  But  it  was  the 
greatness  of  Asia  commanded  me.  I  wanted  to  see  the 
East  not  as  a  spectacle  but  as  the  simmering  vat  in  which 
the  greater  destiny  of  man  brews  and  brews.  .  .  . 


§7 

It  was  necessary  to  tell  my  father  of  my  intentions. 
I  made  numerous  beginnings.  I  tore  up  several  letters 
and  quarrelled  bitterly  with  the  hotel  pens.  At  first  I 
tried  to  describe  the  change  that  had  happened  to  my 
mind,  to  give  him  some  impression  of  the  new  light,  the 
release  that  had  come  to  me.  But  how  difficult  this 
present  world  is  with  its  tainted  and  poisoned  phrases 
and  its  tangled  misunderstandings!  Here  was  I  writing 
for  the  first  time  in  my  life  of  something  essentially 
religious  and  writing  it  to  him  whose  profession  was 
religion,  and  I  could  find  no  words  to  convey  my  meaning 
Ho  him  that  did  not  seem  to  me  fraught  with  the  possi- 
jbilities  of  misinterpretation.  One  evening  I  made  a 
desperate  resolve  to  let  myself  go,  and  scrawled  my  heart 
out  to  him  as  it  seemed  that  night,  a  strange,  long  letter. 
It  was  one  of  the  profoundest  regrets  that  came  to  me 
when  I  saw  him  dead  last  winter  that  I  did  not  risk  his 
misunderstanding  and  post  that  letter.  But  when  I  re- 
read it  in  the  next  morning's  daylight  it  seemed  to  me  so 
rhetorical,  so  full  of— what  shall  I  call  it? — spiritual  bom- 
bast, it  so  caricatured  and  reflected  upon  the  deep  feelings 
sustaining  me,  that  I  could  not  post  it  for  shamefacedness, 

212 


BEGINNING   AGAIN 

and  I  tore  it  up  into  little  pieces  and  sent  instead  the 
briefest  of  notes. 

"I  am  doing  no  good  here  in  Switzerland,'*  I  wrote. 
" Would  you  mind  if  I  went  east?  I  want  to  see  some- 
thing of  the  world  outside  Europe.  I  have  a  fancy  I 
may  find  something  to  do  beyond  there.  Of  course,  it 
will  cost  rather  more  than  my  present  allowance.  I  will 
do  my  best  to  economize.  Don't  bother  if  it  bothers 
you — I've  been  bother  enough  to  you.  .  .  ." 

He  replied  still  more  compactly.  "By  all  means.  I 
will  send  you  some  circular  notes,  Poste  Restante,  Rome. 
That  will  be  on  your  way.  Good  wishes  to  you,  Stephen. 
I'm  glad  you  want  to  go  east  instead  of  just  staying  in 
Switzerland." 

I  sit  here  now  and  wonder,  little  son,  what  he  thought, 
what  he  supposed,  what  he  understood. 

I  loved  my  father,  and  I  began  to  perceive  he  loved 
me  wonderfully.  I  can  imagine  no  man  I  would  have 
sooner  had  for  a  priest  than  him;  all  priestcraft  lays 
hands  if  it  can,  and  with  an  excellent  wisdom,  upon  the 
titles  and  dignity  of  fatherhood;  and  yet  here  am  I  left 
to  guessing — I  do  not  know  whether  my  father  ever 
worshipped,  whether  he  ever  prayed  with  his  heart  bared 
to  God.  There  are  times  when  the  inexpressiveness  of 
life  comes  near  to  overwhelming  me,  when  it  seems  to  me 
we  are  all  asleep  or  entranced,  and  but  a  little  way  above 
the  still  cows  who  stand  munching  slowly  in  a  field. 
Why  couldn't  we  and  why  didn't  we  talk  together?  .  .  .  i 
We  fear  bathos  too  much,  are  shyly  decent  to  the  pitch 
of  mania.  We  have  neither  the  courage  of  our  bodies 
nor  of  our  souls.  .  .  . 

I  went  almost  immediately  to  Rome.    I  stayed  in 
213 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

Rome  some  days,  getting  together  an  outfit,  and  inci- 
dentally seeing  that  greater  city  of  the  dead  in  whose 
embrace  the  modern  city  lies.  I  was  now  becoming 
interested  in  things  outside  my  grooves,  though  my 
grooves  were  still  there,  deep  and  receptive,  and  I  went 
about  the  place  at  last  almost  eagerly,  tracing  the  out- 
lines of  that  great  departed  city  on  whose  colossal  bones 
the  churches  and  palaces  of  the  middle  ages  cluster  like 
weeds  in  the  spaces  and  ruins  of  a  magnificent  garden. 
I  found  myself  one  day  in  the  Forum,  thinking  of  that 
imperialism  that  had  built  the  Basilica  of  Julius  Caesar, 
and  comparing  its  cramped  vestiges  with  that  vaster 
second  administrative  effort  which  has  left  the  world 
the  monstrous  arches  of  Constantine.  I  sat  down  over 
against  these  last  among  the  ruins  of  the  Vestals'  House, 
and  mused  on  that  later  reconstruction  when  the  Empire, 
with  its  science  aborted  and  its  literature  and  philosophy 
shrivelled  to  nothing,  its  social  fabric  ruined  by  the 
extravagances  of  financial  adventure  and  its  honor  and 
patriotism  altogether  dead,  united  itself,  in  a  desperate 
effort  to  continue,  with  all  that  was  most  bickeringly 
intolerant  and  destructive*  in  Christianity — only  to  achieve 
one  common  vast  decay.  All  Europe  to  this  day  is  little 
more  than  the  sequel  to  that  failure.  It  is  the  Roman 
Empire  in  disintegration.  The  very  churches  whose 
domes  rise  to  the  northward  of  the  ancient  remains  are 
built  of  looted  stones  and  look  like  parasitic  and  fungoid 
growths,  and  the  tourists  stream  through  those  spaces 
day  by  day,  stare  at  the  marble  fragments,  the  arches, 
the  fallen  carvings  and  rich  capitals,  with  nothing  greater 
in  their  minds  and  nothing  clearer.  .  . 

I  discovered  I  was  putting  all  this  into  the  form  of  a 
214 


BEGINNING   AGAIN 

letter  to  Mary.  I  was  writing  to  her  in  my  mind,  as  many  I 
people  talk  to  themselves.  And  I  remember  that  I 
wandered  upon  the  Palatine  Hill  musing  over  the  idea 
of  writing  a  long  letter  to  her,  a  long  continuous  letter 
to  her,  a  sort  of  diary  of  impressions  and  ideas,  that  some- 
when,  years  ahead,  I  might  be  able  to  put  into  her  hands. 

One  does  not  carry  out  such  an  idea  into  reality;  it 
is  so  much  easier  to  leave  the  letter  imagined  and  unwritten 
if  there  lives  but  little  hope  of  its  delivery;  yet  for  many 
years  I  kept  up  an  impalpable  correspondence  in  my 
thoughts,  a  stream  of  expression  to  which  no  answer  came 
— until  at  last  the  habits  of  public  writing  and  the  gather- 
ing interests  of  a  new  r61e  in  life  diverted  it  to  other  ends. 


§8 

One  morning  on  the  way  from  Brindisi  to  Egypt  I  came 
up  on  deck  at  dawn  because  my  mind  was  restless  and  I 
could  not  sleep.  Another  solitary  passenger  was  already 
up,  so  intently  watching  a  pink-lit  rocky  coast-line  away 
to  the  north  of  us  that  for  a  time  he  did  not  observe  me. 

"That's  Crete,"  he  said,  when  at  last  he  becanaenaware 
of  me  close  at  hand. 

"  Crete !"  said  I. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "Crete." 

He  came  nearer  to  me.  "That,  sir,"  he  said  with  a 
challenging  emphasis,  "is  the  most  wonderful  island 
I've  ever  yet  set  eyes  on, — quite  the  most  wonderful." 

"Five  thousand  years  ago,"  he  remarked  after  a  pause 
that  seemed  to  me  to  be  calculated,  "they  were  building 
palaces  there,  better  than  the  best  we  can  build  to-day. 

215 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

And  things — like  modern  things.  They  had  bathrooms 
there,  beautifully  fitted  bathrooms— and  admirable  sani- 
tation—admirable. Practically— American.  They  had 
better  artists  to  serve  them  than  your  King  Edward  has, 
why!  Minos  would  have  laughed  or  screamed  at  all  that 
Windsor  furniture.  And  the  things  they  made  of  gold, 
sir — vou  couldn't  get  them  done  anywhere  to-day.  Not 
for  any  money.  There  was  a  Go  about  them.  .  .  .  They 
had  a  kind  of  writing,  too — before  the  Phoenicians.  No 
man  can  read  it  now,  and  there  it  is.  *  Fifty  centuries  ago 
it  was;  and  to-day—  They  grow  oranges  and  lemons. 
And  they  riot.  .  .  .  Everything  else  gone.  .  .  .  It's  as  if 
men  struggled  up  to  a  certain  pitch  and  then — grew 
tired.  ...  All  this  Mediterranean;  it's  a  tired  sea.  ..." 

That  was  the  beginning  of  a  curious  conversation.  He 
was  an  American,  a  year  or  so  younger  than  myself, 
going,  he  said,  "to  look  at  Egypt." 

"In  our  country,"  he  explained,  "we're  apt  to  forget 
all  these  worked-out  regions.  Too  apt.  We  don't  get 
our  perspectives.  We  think  the  whole  blessed  world  is 
one  everlasting  boom.  It  hit  me  first  down  in  Yucatan 
that  that  wasn't  so.  Why!  the  world's  littered  with  the 
remains  of  booms  and  swaggering  beginnings.  American- 
ism!— there's  always  been  Americanism.  This  Mediter- 
ranean is  just  a  Museum  of  old  Americas.  I  guess  Tyre 
and  Sidon  thought  they  were  licking  creation  all  the  time. 
It's  set  me  thinking.  What's  really  going  on?  Why — 
anywhere, — you're  running  about  among  ruins — anywhere. 
And  ruins  of  something  just  as  good  as  anything  we're 
doing  to-day.  *  Better — in  some  ways.  It  takes  the 
heart  out  of  you.  ..." 

It  was  Gidding,  who  is  now  my  close  friend  and  ally. 
216 


BEGINNING   AGAIN 

I  remember  very  vividly  the  flavor  of  morning  freshness 
as  we  watched  Crete  pass  away  northward  and  I  listened 
to  his  talk. 

"I  was  coming  out  of  New  York  Harbor  a  month  ago 
and  looking  back  at  the  skyscrapers/'  he  said,  "and  sud- 
denly it  hit  me  in  the  mind; — 'That's  just  the  next  ruin/ 
I  thought." 

I  remember  that  much  of  our  first  talk,  but  the  rest  of 
it  now  is  indistinct. 

We  had  however  struck  up  an  acquaintance,  we  were 
both  alone,  and  until  he  left  me  on  his  way  to  Abydos  we 
seem  now  to  have  been  conversing  all  the  time.  And  | 
almost  all  the  time  we  were  discussing  human  destiny 
and  the  causes  of  effort  and  decay,  and  whether  the  last 
few  ascendant  centuries  the  world  has  seen  have  in  them 
anything  more  persistent  than  the  countless  beginnings 
that  have  gone  before. 

"There's  Science,"  said  I  a  little  doubtfully. 

"At  Cnossus  there  they  had  Daedalus,  sir,  fifty  centuries 
ago.  Daedalus!  He  was  an  F.R.S.  all  right.  I  haven't 
a  doubt  he  flew.  If  they  hadn't  steel  they  had  brass. 
We're  too  conceited  about  our  little  modern  things." 


§9 

I  found  something  very  striking  and  dramatic  in  the 
passage  from  Europe  to  Asia.  One  steams  slowly  through 
a  desert  that  comes  up  close  to  the  ship;  the  sand  stretches 
away,  hillock  and  mound  beyond  hillock  and  mound; 
one  sees  camels  in  the  offing  stringing  out  to  some  ancient 
destination;  one  is  manifestly  passing  across  a  barrier, — 

217 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

the  canal  has  changed  nothing  of  that.  Suez  is  a  first 
dab  of  tumultuous  Orientalism,  noisy  and  vivid.  And 
then,  after  that  gleam  of  turmoil,  one  opens  out  into  the 
lonely  dark  blue  waters  of  the  Red  Sea.  Right  and  left 
the  shore  is  a  bitter,  sun-scorched  desolation;  eastward 
frowns  a  great  rampart  of  lowering  purple  mountains 
towering  up  to  Sinai.  It  is  like  no  European  landscape. 
The  boat  goes  slowly  as  if  uncharted  dangers  lurked  ahead. 
It  is  a  new  world  with  a  new  atmosphere.  Then  comes 
wave  upon  wave  of  ever  more  sultry  air,  and  the  punkahs 
begin  to  swing  and  the  white  clothes  appear.  Everyone 
casts  off  Europe,  assumes  an  Asiatic  livery.  The  very  sun, 
rushing  up  angrily  and  abruptly  after  a  heated  night,  is 
unfamiliar,  an  Asiatic  sun. 

And  so  one  goes  down  that  reef -fringed  waterway  to 
Aden;  it  is  studded  with  lonely-looking  lighthouses  that 
burn,  it  seems,  untended,  and  sometimes  in  their  melan- 
choly isolation  swing  great  rhythmic  arms  of  light.  And 
then,  land  and  the  last  lateen  sails  of  Aden  vanishing  to- 
gether, one  stands  out  into  the  hot  thundery  monotonies 
of  the  Indian  Ocean;  into  imprisonment  in  a  blue  horizon 
across  whose  Titan  ring  the  engines  seem  to  throb  in  vain. 
How  one  paces  the  ship  day  by  day,  and  eats  and  dozes 
and  eats  again,  and  gossips  inanely  and  thanks  Heaven 
even  for  a  flight  of  flying  fish  or  a  trail  of  smoke  from  over 
'the  horizon  to  take  one's  mind  a  little  out  of  one's  oily 
quivering  prison!  ...  A  hot  portentous  delay;  a  sinister 
significant  pause;  that  is  the  voyage  from  Europe  to  India 
still. 

I  suppose  by  the  time  that  you  will  go  to  India  all  this 
prelude  will  have  vanished,  you  will  rattle  through  in  a 
train-de-luxe  from  Calais,  by  way  of  Baku  or  Constan- 

218 


BEGINNING   AGAIN 

tinople;  you  will  have  none  of  this  effect  of  a  deliberate 
sullen  approach  across  limitless  miles  of  sea.  But  that  is 
how  I  went  to  India.  Everything  seemed  to  expand;  I 
was  coming  out  of  the  frequent  landfalls,  the  neighborly 
intimacies  and  neighborly  conflicts  of  the  Mediterranean 
into  something  remoter;  into  larger  seas  and  greater  lands, 
rarer  communications  and  a  vaster  future.  .  .  . 

To  go  from  Europe  to  Asia  is  like  going  from  Norway 
to  Russia,  from  something  slight  and  " advanced"  to 
something  massive  and  portentous.  I  felt  that  nearly 
nine  years  ago;  to-day  all  Asia  seems  moving  forward  to 
justify  my  feelings.  .  .  . 

And  I  remember  too  that  as  I  went  down  the  Red  Sea 
and  again  in  the  Indian  Ocean  I  had  a  nearly  intolerable 
passion  of  loneliness.  A  wound  may  heal  and  still  leave| 
pain.  I  was  coming  out  of  Europe  as  one  comes  out  of  a 
familiar  house  into  something  larger  and  stranger,  I 
seemed  but  a  little  speck  of  life,  and  behind  me,  far  away 
and  silent  and  receding,  was  the  one  other  being  to  whom 
my  thoughts  were  open.  It  seemed  very  cruel  to  me  that 
I  could  not  write  to  her. 

Such  moods  were  to  come  to  me  again  and  again,  and1 
particularly  during  the  inactivities  of  voyages  and  in 
large  empty  spaces  and  at  night  when  I  was  weary.  At 
other  times  I  could  banish  and  overcome  them  by  forcing 
myself  to  be  busy  and  by  going  to  see  novel  and  moving 
things. 


CHAPTER  THE  EIGHTH 
THIS  SWARMING  BUSINESS  OP  MANKIND 


I  DO  not  think  I  could  now  arrange  into  a  consecutive 
history  my  travellings,  my  goings  and  returnings  in  my 
wandering  effort  to  see  and  comprehend  the  world.  And 
certainly  even  if  I  could  arrange  my  facts  I  should  still 
be  at  a  loss  to  tell  of  the  growth  of  ideas  that  is  so  much 
more  important  than  any  facts,  to  trace  the  increasing 
light  to  its  innumerable  sources,  to  a  chink  here,  to  a 
glowing  reflection  there,  to  a  leap  of  burning  light  from 
some  long  inert  darkness  close  at  hand.  But  steadily  the 
light  grew,  and  this  vast  world  of  man,  in  which  our 
world,  little  son,  is  the  world  of  a  limited  class  in  a  small 
island,  began  to  take  on  definite  forms,  to  betray  broad 
universal  movements;  what  seemed  at  first  chaotic,  a 
drift  and  tangle  of  passions,  traditions,  foolish  ideas, 
blundering  hostilities,  careless  tolerances,  became  con- 
fusedly systematic,  showed  something  persistent  and 
generalized  at  work  among  its  multitudinous  perplexity. 

I  wonder  now  if  I  can  put  before  you  very  briefly  the 
main  generalizations  that  were  growing  up  in  my  mind 
during  my  exile,  the  simplified  picture  into  which  I  trans- 
lated the  billions  of  sights  and  sounds  and — smells,  for 

220 


THE    BUSINESS   OF   MANKIND 

every  part  of  the  world  has  its  distinctive  olfactory  palette 
as  much  as  its  palette  of  colors — that  rained  daily  and 
nightly  upon  my  mind. 

Before  my  eyes  again  as  I  sit  here  in  this  quiet  walled 
French  garden,  the  great  space  before  the  Jumna  Musjid 
at  Delhi  reappears,  as  I  saw  it  in  the  evening  stillness 
against  a  glowing  sky  of  gold,  and  the  memory  of  count- 
less worshippers  within,  praying  with  a  devotion  no 
European  displays.  And  then  comes  a  memory  of  that 
long  reef  of  staircases  and  temples  and  buildings,  the  ghats 
of  Benares,  in  the  blazing  morning  sun,  swarming  with  a 
vast  multitude  of  multicolored  people  and  the  water  also 
swarming  with  brown  bodies.  It  has  the  colors  of  a  bed 
of  extravagantly  splendid  flowers  and  the  light  that  is 
Indian  alone.  Even  as  I  sit  here  these  places  are  alive 
with  happening.  It  is  just  past  midday  here;  at  this 
moment  the  sun  sinks  in  the  skies  of  India,  the  Jumna 
Musjid  flushes  again  with  the  glow  of  sunset,  the  smoke 
of  evening  fires  streams  heavenward  against  its  subtle 
lines,  and  upon  those  steps  at  Benares  that  come  down 
the  hillside  between  the  conquering  mosque  of  Aurangzeb 
and  the  shining  mirror  of  the  Ganges  a  thousand  silent 
seated  figures  fall  into  meditation.  And  other  memories 
recur  and  struggle  with  one  another;  the  crowded  river- 
streets  of  Canton,  the  rafts  and  houseboats  and  junks 
innumerable,  riding  over  inky  water,  begin  now  to  twinkle 
with  a  thousand  lights.  They  are  ablaze  in  Osaka  and 
Yokohama  and  Tokio,  and  the  swarming  staircase  streets 
of  Hong  Kong  glitter  with  a  wicked  activity  now  that 
night  has  come.  I  flash  a  glimpse  of  Burmese  temples, 
of  villages  in  Java,  of  the  sombre  purple  masses  of  the 
walls  of  the  Tartar  city  at  Pekin  with  squat  pagoda- 

15  221 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

/ 

guarded  gates.  How  those  great  outlines  lowered  at  me 
in  the  twilight,  full  of  fresh  memories  and  grim  anticipa- 
tions of  baseness  and  violence  and  bloodshed!  I  sit  here 
recalling  it — feeling  it  all  out  beyond  the  trellised  vine- 
clad  wall  that  bounds  my  physical  vision Vast  crowded 

world  that  I  have  seen!  going  from  point  to  point  seeking 
for  clues,  for  generalities,  until  at  last  it  seems  to  me  that 
there  emerges — something  understandable. 

I  think  I  have  got  something  understandable  out  of 
it  all. 

What  a  fantastically  courageous  thing  is  this  mind  of 
ours!  My  thoughts  seem  to  me  at  once  presumptuous 
and  inevitable.  I  do  not  know  why  it  is  that  I  should 
dare,  that  any  of  us  should  dream  of  this  attempt  to 
comprehend.  But  we  who  think  are  everyone  impelled 
to  this  amazing  effort  to  get  it  all  together  into  some 
simple  generality.  It  is  not  reason  but  a  deep-seated 
instinct  that  draws  our  intelligence  towards  explanations, 
that  sets  us  perpetually  seeking  laws,  seeking  statements 
that  will  fit  into  infinite,  incessantly  interweaving  com- 
plexities, and  be  true  of  them  all!  There  is  I  perceive  a 
valiant  and  magnificent  stupidity  about  the  human  mind, 
!a  disregard  of  disproportion  and  insufficiency — like  the 
ferret  which  will  turn  from  the  leveret  it  has  seized  to 
attack  even  man  if  he  should  interfere.  By  these  desperate 
"feats  of  thinking  it  is  that  our  species  has  achieved  its 
victories.  By  them  it  survives.  By  them  it  must  stand 
the  test  of  ultimate  survival.  Some  forgotten  man  in  our 
ancestry— for  every  begetting  man  alive  was  in  my  in- 
dividual ancestry  and  yours  three  thousand  years  ago — 
first  dared  to  think  of  the  world  as  round, — an  astounding 
temerity.  He  rolled  up  the  rivers  and  mountains,  the 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   MANKIND 

forests  and  plains  and  broad  horizons  that  stretched 
beyond  his  ken,  that  seemed  to  commonsense  to  go  on 
certainly  for  ever,  into  a  ball,  into  a  little  ball  "like  an 
orange."  Magnificent  feat  of  the  imagination,  outdoing 
Thor's  deep  draught  of  the  sea!  And  once  he  had  done 
it,  all  do  it  and  no  one  falters  at  the  deed.  You  are  not 
yet  seven  as  I  write  and  already  you  are  serenely  aware 
that  you  live  upon  a  sphere.  And  in  much  the  same  man- 
ner it  is  that  we,  who  are  sociologists  and  economists, 
publicists  and  philosophers  and  what  not,  are  attempting 
now  to  roll  up  the  vast  world  of  facts  which  concern  human 
intercourse,  the  whole  indeed  of  history  and  archaeology, 
into  some  similar  imaginable  and  manageable  shape,  that 
presently  everyone  will  be  able  to  grasp. 

I  suppose  there  was  a  time  when  nobody  bothered  at 
all  about  the  shape  of  the  earth,  when  nobody  had  even 
had  the  idea  that  the  earth  could  be  conceived  as  having 
a  shape,  and  similarly  it  is  true  that  it  is  only  in  recent 
centuries  that  people  have  been  able  to  suppose  that  there 
was  a  shape  to  human  history.  It  is  indeed  not  much 
more  than  a  century  since  there  was  any  real  emergence 
from  theological  assumptions  and  pure  romanticism  and 
accidentalism  in  these  matters.  Old  Adam  Smith  it  was, 
probing  away  at  the  roots  of  economics,  who  set  going 
the  construction  of  ampler  propositions.  From  him 
spring  all  those  new  interpretations  which  have  changed 
the  writing  of  history  from  a  record  of  dramatic  reigns 
and  wars  and  crises  to  an  analysis  of  economic  forces. 
How  impossible  it  would  be  for  anyone  now  to  write  that 
great  chapter  of  Gibbon's  in  which  he  sweeps  together  into 
one  contempt  the  history  of  sixty  Emperors  and  six  hun- 
dred years  of  time.  His  note  of  weariness  and  futility 

223 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

vanishes  directly  one's  vision  penetrates  the  immediate 
surface.  Those  Heraclians  and  Isaurians  and  Comneni 
were  not  history,  a  schoolboy  nowadays  knows  that  their 
record  is  not  history,  knows  them  for  the  mere  scum  upon 
the  stream. 

i  And  still  to-day  we  have  our  great  interpretations  to 
make.  Ours  is  a  time  of  guesses,  theories  and  provisional 
generalizations^  Our  phase  corresponds  to  the  cosmog- 
raphy that  was  still  a  little  divided  between  discs  and 
domes  and  spheres  and  cosmic  eggs;  that  was  still  a 
thousand  years  from  measuring  and  weighing  a  planet. 
For  a  long  time  my  mind  hovered  about  the  stimulating 
theories  of  Socialism  and  particularly  about  those  more 
systematic  forms  of  Socialist  teaching  that  centre  about 
Karl  Marx.  He  rose  quite  naturally  out  of  those  early 
economists  who  saw  all  the  world  in  terms  of  production 
and  saving.  He  was  a  necessary  step  for  me  at  least,  on 
the  way  to  understanding.  For  a  time  I  did  so  shape  the 
world  in  my  mind  that  it  seemed  to  me  no  more  than  a 
vast  enterprise  for  the  organization  and  exploitation  of 
labor.  For  a  time  I  thought  human  life  was  essentially 
a  labor  problem,  that  working  and  controlling  work  and 
lending  and  selling  and  "speculating"  made  the  essential 
substance  of  human  life,  over  which  the  forms  of  politics 
ran  as  the  stripes  of  a  tiger's  skin  run  and  bend  over  its 
living  muscles.  I  followed  my  period  in  thinking  that. 
You  will  find  in  Ferrero's  "Roman  Decline,"  which  was 
published  early  in  this  century,  and  which  waits  for  you 
in  the  library,  almost  exactly  the  method  of  interpreta- 
tion that  was  recommending  itself  to  me  in  1904  and  1905. 
Well,  the  labor  problem  concerns  a  great — substantial, 
shall  I  say?— in  human  society.  It  is  only  I  think  the 

224 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    MANKIND 

basis  and  matter  of  society,  not  its  shape  and  life  and 
reality,  but  it  had  to  be  apprehended  before  I  could  get 
on  to  more  actual  things.  Insensibly  the  idea  that 
contemporary  political  forms  mattered  very  fundamentally 
to  men,  was  fading  out  of  my  mind.  The  British  Empire 
and  the  German  Empire,  the  Unity  of  Italy,  and  Anglo- 
Saxon  ascendency,  the  Yellow  Peril  and  all  the  other  vast 
phantoms  of  the  World-politician's  mythology  were  fading 
out  of  my  mind  in  those  years,  as  the  Olympic  cosmogony 
must  have  faded  from  the  mind  of  some  inquiring  Greek 
philosopher  in  the  days  of  Heraclitus.  And  I  revised  my 
history  altogether  in  the  new  light.  The  world  had 
ceased  to  be  chaotic  in  my  mind;  it  had  become  a  vast  if 
as  yet  a  quite  inconclusive  drama  between  employer  and 
employed. 

It  makes  a  wonderful  history,  this  history  of  mankind  as 
a  history  of  Labor,  as  a  history  of  the  perpetual  attempts 
of  an  intelligent  minority  to  get  things  done  by  other 
people.  It  does  not  explain  how  that  aggression  of  the 
minority  arose  nor  does  it  give  any  conception  of  a 
primordial  society  which  corresponds  with  our  knowledge 
of  the  realities  of  primitive  communities.  One  begins 
rather  in  the  air  with  a  human  society  that  sells  and  bar- 
ters and  sustains  contracts  and  permits  land  to  be  pri- 
vately owned,  and  having  as  hastily  as  possible  got  away 
from  that  difficulty  of  beginnings,  having  ignored  the 
large  areas  of  the  world  which  remain  under  a  pacific 
and  unprogressive  agriculture  to  this  day,  the  rest  of  the 
story  becomes  extremely  convincing  and  illuminating. 
It  does  indeed  give  a  sustaining  explanation  to  a  large 
part  of  recorded  history,  this  generalization  about  the 
proclivity  of  able  and  energetic  people  to  make  other 
4  225 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

people  do  things.  One  ignores  what  is  being  done  as 
if  that  mattered  nothing,  and  concentrates  upon  the 
use  and  enslavement  of  men. 

One  sees  that  enslavement  to  labor  progressing  from 
crude  directness  to  the  most  subtly  indirect  methods. 
The  first  expedient  of  enterprise  was  the  sword  and  then 
the  whip,  and  still  there  are  remote  and  ugly  corners  of 
the  world,  in  the  Mexican  Valle  Nazionale  or  in  Portu- 
guese South  Africa,  where  the  whip  whistles  still  and  the 
threat  of  great  suffering  and  death  follows  hard  upon  the 
reluctant  toiler.  But  the  larger  part  of  our  modern 
slavery  is  past  the  stage  of  brand  and  whip.  We  have 
fallen  into  methods  at  once  more  subtle  and  more  effec- 
tive. We  stand  benevolently  in  front  of  our  fellow  man, 
offering,  almost  as  if  it  were  food  and  drink  and  shelter  and 
love,  the  work  we  want  him  to  do;  and  behind  him,  we 
are  acutely  aware,  is  necessity,  sometimes  quite  of  our 
making,  as  when  we  drive  him  to  work  by  a  hut-tax  or  a 
poll  tax  or  a  rent,  that  obliges  him  to  earn  money,  and 
sometimes  not  so  obviously  of  our  making,  sometimes  so 
little  of  our  making  that  it  is  easy  to  believe  we  have  no 
power  to  remove  it.  Instead  of  flicking  the  whip,  we 
groan  at  last  with  Harriet  Martineau  at  the  inexorable 
laws  of  political  economy  that  condemn  us  to  comfort 
and  direction,  and  those  others  to  toil  and  hardship  and 
indignity.  .  .  . 

And  through  the  consideration  of  these  latter  later 
aspects  it  was  that  I  came  at  last  to  those  subtler  problems 
of  tacit  self-deception,  of  imperfect  and  unwilling  appre- 
hension, of  innocently  assumed  advantages,  of  wilfully 
disregarded  unfairness;  and  also  to  all  those  other  prob- 
lems of  motive,  those  forgotten  questions  of  why  we  make 

226 


THE    BUSINESS    OF,MANKIND 

others  work  for  us  long  after  our  personal  needs  are 
satisfied,  why  men  aggrandize  and  undertake,  which 
gradually  have  become  in  my  mind  the  essential  problems 
of  human  relationship,  replacing  the  crude  problems  of 
labor  altogether  in  that  position,  making  them  at  last  only 
questions  of  contrivance  and  management  on  the  way  to 
greater  ends. 

I  have  come  to  believe  now  that  labor  problems  are 
problems  merely  by  the  way.  They  have  played  their 
part  in  a  greater  scheme.  This  phase  of  expropriation 
and  enslavement,  this  half  designed  and  half  unconscious 
driving  of  the  duller  by  the  clever,  of  the  pacific  by  the 
bolder,  of  those  with  weak  appetites  and  imaginations  by 
those  with  stronger  appetites  and  imaginations,  has  been 
a  necessary  phase  in  human  development.  With  my 
innate  passionate  desire  to  find  the  whole  world  purpose- 
ful, I  cannot  but  believe  that.  But  however  necessary 
it  has  been,  it  is  necessary  no  longer.  Strangest  of 
saviors,  there  rises  over  the  conflicts  of  mankind  the 
glittering  angular  promise  of  the  machine.  There  is  no 
longer  any  need  for  slavery,  open  or  disguised.  We  do 
not  need  slaves  nor  toilers  nor  mere  laborers  any  more; 
they  are  no  longer  essential  to  a  civilization.  Man  has 
ridden  on  his  brother  man  out  of  the  need  of  servitude. 
He  struggles  through  to  a  new  phase,  a  phase  of  release, 
a  phase  -when  leisure  and  an  unexampled  freedom  is 
possible  to  every  human  being.  Is  possible.  And  it  is 
there  one  halts  seeing  that  splendid  possibility  of  aspira- 
tion and  creation  before  mankind — and  seeing  mankind 
for  the  most  part  still  downcast,  quite  unaware  or  incredu- 
lous, following  the  old  rounds,  the  grooves  of  ancient  and 
superseded  assumptions  and  subjections.  .  .  . 

227 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

But  here  I  will  not  trace  in  any  detail  the  growth  of 
my  conviction  that  the  ancient  and  heavy  obligation  to 
work  hard  and  continually  throughout  life  has  already 
slipped  from  man's  shoulders.  Suffice  it  that  now  I 
conceive  of  the  task  before  mankind  as  a  task  essentially 
of  rearrangement,  as  a  problem  in  relationships,  extremely 
complex  and  difficult  indeed,  but  credibly  solvable. 
During  my  Indian  and  Chinese  journey  I  was  still  at  the 
Marxist  stage.  I  went  about  the  east  looking  at  labor, 
watching  its  organization  and  direction,  seeing  great 
interests  and  enterprises  replace  the  diffused  life  of  an 
earlier  phase;  the  disputes  and  discussions  in  the  Trans- 
vaal which  had  first  opened  my  mind  to  these  questions 
came  back  to  me,  and  steadily  I  lost  my  interest  in  those 
mere  political  and  national  issues  with  their  paraphernalia 
of  kings  and  flags  and  governments  and  parties  that  had 
hitherto  blinded  me  to  these  more  fundamental  inter- 
actions. 

§2 

It  happened  that  in  Bombay  circumstances  conspired 
to  bring  the  crude  facts  of  labor  enslavement  vividly 
before  me.  I  found  a  vigorous  agitation  raging  in  the 
English  press  against  the  horrible  sweating  that  was  going 
on  in  the  cotton  mills,  I  met  the  journalist  most  intimately 
concerned  in  the  business  on  my  second  day  in  India, 
and  before  a  week  was  out  I  was  hard  at  work  getting 
up  the  question  and  preparing  a  memorandum  with  him 
on  the  possibility  of  immediate  legislative  intervention. 
The  very  name  of  Bombay,  which  for  most  people  recalls 
a  spacious  and  dignified  landfall,  lateen  sails,  green  islands 

228 


THE   BUSINESS   OF    MANKIND 

and  jutting  precipices,  a  long  city  of  trees  and  buildings 
like  a  bright  and  various  breakwater  between  the  great 
harbor  and  the  sea,  and  then  exquisite  little  temples, 
painted  bullock  carriages,  Towers  of  Silence,  Parsis, 
and  an  amazingly  kaleidoscopic  population, — is  for  me 
a  reminder  of  narrow,  foetid,  plague-stricken  streets  and 
tall  insanitary  tenement-houses  packed  and  dripping  with 
humanity,  and  of  terrible  throbbing  factories  working 
far  into  the  night,  blazing  with  electric  light  against  the 
velvet-black  night-sky  of  India,  damp  with  the  steam- 
clouds  that  are  maintained  to  moisten  the  thread,  and 
swarming  with  emaciated  overworked  brown  children — 
for  even  the  adults,  spare  and  small,  in  those  mills  seem 
children  to  a  western  eye. 

I  plunged  into  this  heated  dreadful  business  with  a 
passionate  interest  and  went  back  to  the  Yacht  Club 
only  when  the  craving  for  air  and  a  good  bath  and  clean 
clothes  and  space  and  respect  became  unendurable.  I 
waded  deep  in  labor,  in  this  process  of  consuming  human- 
ity for  gain,  chasing  my  facts  through  throbbing  quiver- 
ing sheds  reeking  of  sweat  and  excrement  under  the  tall 
black-smoking  chimneys, — chasing  them  in  very  truth, 
because  when  we  came  prying  into  the  mills  after  the  hour 
when  child-labor  should  cease,  there  would  be  a  shrill 
whistle,  a  patter  of  feet  and  a  cuffing  and  hiding  of  the 
naked  little  creatures  we  were  trying  to  rescue.  They 
would  be  hidden  under  rugs,  in  boxes,  in  the  most  impos- 
sible places,  and  we  dragged  them  out  scared  and  lying. 
Many  of  them^  were  perhaps  seven  years  old  at  most ; 
and  the  adults — men  and  women  of  fourteen  that  is  to 
say — we  could  not  touch  at  all,  and  they  worked  in  that 
Indian  heat,  in  a  noisome  air  drenched  with  steam  for 

229 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

fourteen  and  fifteen  hours  a  day.  And  essential  to  that 
general  impression  is  a  memory  of  a  slim  Parsi  mill- 
manager  luminously  explaining  the  inherited  passion  for 
toil  in  the  Indian  weaver,  and  a  certain  bulky  Hindu  with 
a  lemon-yellow  turban  and  a  strip  of  plump  brown  stomach 
showing  between  his  clothes,  who  was  doing  very  well,  he 
said,  with  two  wives  and  five  children  in  the  mills. 

That  is  my  Bombay,  that  and  the  columns  of  crossed 
circles  marking  plague  cases  upon  the  corners  of  houses 
and  a  peculiar  acrid  smell,  and  the  polychromatic  stir 
of  crowded  narrow  streets  between  cliffs  of  architecture 
with  carved  timbers  and  heavy  ornamentations,  into  which 
the  sun  strikes  obliquely  and  lights  a  thousand  vivid 
hues.  .  .  . 

Bombay,  the  gateway  of  what  silly  people  were  still 
calling  in  those  days  "the  immemorial  East,"  Bombay, 
which  is  newer  than  Boston  or  New  York,  Bombay  which 
has  grown  beneath  the  Englishman's  shadow  out  of  a 
Portuguese  fort  in  the  last  two  hundred  years.  .  .  . 


§3 

I  came  out  of  these  dark  corners  presently  into  the 
sunblaze  of  India.  I  was  now  intensely  interested  in  the 
whole  question  of  employment  and  engaged  in  preparing 
matter  for  my  first  book,  "Enterprise  and  India/ '  and 
therein  you  may  read  how  I  went  first  to  Assam  and  then 
down  to  Ceylon  following  up  this  perplexing  and  com- 
plicated business  of  human  enslavement  to  toil,  exercised 
by  this  great  spectacle  of  human  labor,  and  at  once 
attracted  by  and  stimulated  by  and  dissatisfied  with  those 

230 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   MANKIND 

socialist  generalizations  that  would  make  all  this  vast 
harsh  spectacle  of  productive  enterprise  a  kind  of  wicked- 
ness and  outrage  upon  humanity.  And  behind  and  about 
<  the  things  I  was  looking  for  were  other  things  for  which 
I  was  not  looking,  that  slowly  came  into  and  qualified  the 
problem.  It  dawned  upon  me  by  degrees  that  India  is  not 
so  much  one  country  as  a  vast  spectacle  of  human  develop- 
ment at  every  stage,  in  infinite  variety.  One  ranges 
between  naked  savages  and  the  most  sophisticated  of 
human  beings.  I  pursued  my  enquiries  about  great 
modern  enterprises,  about  railway  labor,  canal  labor, 
tea-planting,  across  vast  stretches  of  country  where  men 
still  lived,  illiterate,  agricultural,  unprogressive  and  simple, 
as  men  lived  before  the  first  stirrings  of  recorded  history. 
One  sees  by  the  tanks  of  those  mud-built  villages  groups 
of  women  with  brass  vessels  who  are  identical  in  pose  and 
figure  and  quality  with  the  women  modelled  in  Tanagra 
figures,  and  the  droning  wall-wheel  is  the  same  that 
irrigated  the  fields  of  ancient  Greece,  and  the  crops  and 
beasts  and  all  the  life  is  as  it  was  in  Greece  and  Italy, 
Phoenicia  and  Judea  before  the  very  dawn  of  history. 

By  imperceptible  degrees  I  came  to  realize  that  this 
matter  of  expropriation  and  enslavement  and  control, 
which  bulks  so  vastly  upon  the  modern  consciousness, 
which  the  Socialists  treat  as  though  it  was  the  compre- 
hensive present  process  of  mankind,  is  no  more  than  one 
aspect  of  an  overlife  that  struggles  out  of  a  massive  an- 
cient and  traditional  common  way  of  living,  struggles  out 
again  and  again — blindly  and  always  so  far  with  a  dis- 
orderly insuccess.  .  .  . 

I  began  to  see  in  their  proper  proportion  the  vast  en- . 
during  normal  human  existence,  the  peasant's  agricultural 

231 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

life,  unlettered,  laborious  and  essentially  unchanging  on 
the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  those  excrescences  of 
multitudinous  city  aggregation,  those  stormy  excesses  of 
productive  energy  that  flare  up  out  of  that  life,  establish 
for  a  time  great  unstable  strangenesses  of  human  living, 
palaces,  cities,  roads,  empires,  literatures,  and  then  totter 
and  fall  back  again  into  ruin.  In  India  even  more  than 
about  the  Mediterranean  all  this  is  spectacular.  There 
the  peasant  goes  about  his  work  according  to  the  usage 
of  fifty  thousand  years.  He  has  a  primitive  version  of 
religion,  a  moral  tradition,  a  social  usage,  closely  adapted 
by  countless  years  of  trial  and  survival  to  his  needs,  and 
the  whole  land  is  littered  with  the  vestiges  and  abandoned 
material  of  those  newer,  bolder,  more  experimental  be- 
ginnings, beginnings  that  merely  began. 

It  was  when  I  was  going  through  the  panther-haunted 
palaces  of  Akbar  at  Fatehpur  Sikri  that  I  first  felt  how 
tremendously  the  ruins  of  the  past  may  face  towards  the 
future;  the  thing  there  is  like  a  frozen  wave  that  rose  and 
never  broke;  and  once  I  had  caught  that  light  upon 
things,  I  found  the  same  quality  in  all  the  ruins  I  saw,  in 
Amber  and  Vijayanagar  and  Chitor,  and  in  all  that  I  have 
seen  or  heard  of,  in  ancient  Rome  and  ancient  Verona,  in 
Paestum  and  Cnossus  and  ancient  Athens.  None  of  these 
places  was  ever  really  finished  and  done  with ;  the  Basilicas 
of  Caesar  and  Constantine  just  as  much  as  the  baths  and 
galleries  and  halls  of  audience  at  Fatehpur  Sikri  express 
not  ends  achieved  but  thwarted  intentions  of  permanence. 
They  embody  repulse  and  rejection.  They  are  trials, 
c  bandoned  trials,  towards  ends  vaguely  apprehended,  ends 
ielt  rather  than  known.  Even  so  was  I  moved  by  the 
i  Bruges-like  emptinesses  of  Pekin,  in  the  vast  pretensions 

232 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    MANKIND 

of  its  Forbidden  City,  which  are  like  a  cry,  long  sustained, 
that  at  last  dies  away  in  a  wail.  I  saw  the  place  in  1905 
in  that  slack  interval  after  the  European  looting  and  be- 
fore the  great  awakening  that  followed  the  Russo-Japanese 
war.  Pekin  in  a  century  or  so  may  be  added  in  its  turn 
to  the  list  of  abandoned  endeavors.  Insensibly  the  sceptre 
passes.  .  .  .  Nearer  home  than  any  of  these  places  have  I 
imagined  the  same  thing;  in  Paris  it  seemed  tome  I  felt 
the  first  chill  shadow  of  that  same  arrest,  that  impalpable 
ebb  and  cessation  at  the  very  crest  of  things,  that  voice 
which  opposes  to  all  the  hasty  ambitions  and  gathering 
eagerness  of  men:  "It  is  not  here,  it  is  not  yet." 

Only  the  other  day  as  I  came  back  from  Paris  to  this 
quiet  place  and  walked  across  the  fields  from  the  railway 
station  to  this  house,  I  saw  an  old  woman,  a  grandmother, 
a  bent  old  crone  with  two  children  playing  about  her  as 
she  cut  grass  by  the  wayside,  and  she  cut  it,  except  that  her 
sickle  was  steel,  exactly  as  old  women  were  cutting  grass 
before  there  was  writing,  before  the  dawn  of  history,  before 
men  laid  the  first  stones  one  upon  the  other  of  the  first 
city  that  ever  became  a  ruin.  .  .  . 

You  see  Civilization  has  never  yet  existed,  it  has  only 
continually  and  obstinately  attempted  to  be.  Our 
Civilization  is  but  the  indistinct  twilight  before  the  dawn. 
It  is  still  only  a  confused  attempt,  a  flourish  out  of  bar- 
barism, and  the  normal  life  of  men,  the  toiling  earthy  life 
of  the  field  and  the  .byre,  goes  on  still  like  a  stream  that  at 
once  supports  and  carries  to  destruction  the  experimental 
ships  of  some  still  imperfect  inventor.  India  gives  it  all 
from  first  to  last,  and  now  the  modern  movement,  the 
latest  half-conscious  struggle  of  the  New  Thing  in  mankind, 
throws  up  Bombay  and  Calcutta,  vast  feverish  pustules 

233 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

upon  the  face  of  the  peninsula,  bridges  the  sacred  rivers 
with  hideous  iron  lattice-work  and  smears  the  sky  of  the 
dusty  ruin-girdled  city  of  Delhi, — each  ruin  is  the  vestige 
of  an  empire, — with  the  black  smoke  of  factory  chimneys. 
Altogether  scattered  over  that  sun-burnt  plain  there 
are  the  remains  of  five  or  six  extinguished  Delhis,  that 
played  their  dramas  of  frustration  before  the  Delhi  of 
the  Great  Mogul.  This  present  phase  of  human  living 
— its  symbol  at  Delhi  is  now,  I  suppose,  a  scaffold- 
bristling  pile  of  neo-Georgian  building — is  the  latest  of  the 
constructive  synthetic  efforts  to  make  a  newer  and  fuller 
life  for  mankind.  Who  dares  call  it  the  last?  I  question 
myself  constantly  whether  this  life  we  live  to-day,  whether 
that  too,  is  more  than  a  trial  of  these  blind  constructive 
forces,  more  universal  perhaps,  more  powerful  perhaps 
than  any  predecessor  but  still  a  trial,  to  litter  the  world 
with  rusting  material  when  the  phase  of  recession  recurs. 

But  yet  I  can  never  quite  think  that  is  so.  This  time, 
surely,  it  is  different.  This  time  may  indeed  be  the  be- 
ginning of  a  permanent  change;  this  time  there  are  new 
elements,  new  methods  and  a  new  spirit  at  work  upon 
construction  that  the  world  has  never  known  before. 
Mankind  may  be  now  in  the  dawn  of  a  fresh  phase  of 
living  altogether.  It  is  possible.  The  forces  of  con- 

^struction  are  proportionally  gigantic.  There  was  never 
so  much  clear  and  critical  thought  in  the  world  as  there 
is  now,  never  so  large  a  body  of  generally  accessible 
knowledge  and  suggestion,  never  anything  like  the  same 

,  breadth  of  outlook,  the  same  universality  of  imaginative 

^freedom.  That  is  so  in  spite  of  infinite  turmoil  and  con- 
fusion. Moreover  the  effort  now  is  less  concentrated, 
less  dramatic.  There  is  no  one  vital  center  to  the  modern 

1  234 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    MANKIND 

movement  which  disaster  can  strike  or  decay  undermine! 
If  Paris  or  New  York  slacken  and  grow  dull  and  material-! 
ist,  if  Berlin  and  London  conspire  for  a  mutual  destruction, 
Tokio  or  Baku  or  Valparaiso  or  Christiania  or  Smyrna! 
or  Delhi  will  shelter  and  continue  the  onward  impetus. 

And  this  time  too  it  is  not  any  one  person,  any  one 
dynasty,  any  one  cult  or  race  which  carries  our  destiny.! 
Human  thought  has  begun  to  free  itself  from  individual! 
entanglements  and  dramatic  necessities  and  accidental! 
standards.     It  becomes  a  collective  mind,  a  collective] 
will   towards  achievement,  greater   than  individuals  or  I 
cities  or  kingdoms  or  peoples,  a  mind  and  will  to  which  \ 
we  all  contribute  and  which  none  of  us  may  command  nor  ^ 
compromise  by  our  private  errors.     It  ceases  to  be  aris- 
tocratic; it  detaches  itself  from  persons  and  takes  posses- 
sion of  us  all.     We  are  involved  as  it  grows  free  and  domi- 
nant, we  find  ourselves,  in  spite  of  ourselves,  in  spite  of 
quarrels  and  jealousies  and  conflicts,  helping  and  serving 
in  the  making  of  a  new  world-city,  a  new  greater  State 
above  our  legal  States,  in  which  all  human  life  becomes  a 
splendid   enterprise,    free   and   beautiful,    whosjs   aptest 
symbol  in  all  our  world  is  a  huge  Gothic  Cathedral  lit  to 
flame  by  the  sun,  whose  scheme  is  the  towering  conquest 
of  the  universe,  whose  every  little  detail  is  the  wrought- 
out  effort  of  a  human  soul.  .  .  . 

Such  were  the  ideas  that  grew  together  in  my  mind 
as  I  went  about  India  and  the  East,  across  those  vast 
sunlit  plains,  where  men  and  women  still  toil  in  their 
dusty  fields  for  a  harsh  living  and  live  in  doorless  hovels 
on  floors  of  trampled  cow-dung,  persecuted  by  a  hundred 
hostile  beasts  and  parasites,  caught  and  eaten  by  tigers 
and  panthers  as  cats  eat  mice,  and  grievously  afflicted  by 

235 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

periodic  famine  and  pestilence,  even  as  men  and  women 
lived  before  the  dawn  of  history,  for  untold  centuries,  for 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  years. 


§4 

How  strange  we  English  seem  in  India,  a  little  scattered 
garrison.  Are  we  anything  more  than  accidental,  any- 
thing more  than  the  messenger-boy  who  has  brought  the 
impetus  of  the  new  effort  towards  civilization  through  the 
gates  of  the  East?  Are  we  makers  or  just  a  means,  cas- 
usally  taken  up  and  used  by  the  great  forces  of  God? 

I  do  not  know,  I  have  never  been  able  to  tell.  I  have 
never  been  able  to  decide  whether  we  are  the  greatest  or 
the  dullest  of  peoples. 

I  think  we  are  an  imaginative  people  with  an  imagina- 
tion at  once  gigantic,  heroic  and  shy,  and  also  we  are  a 
strangely  restrained  and  disciplined  people  who  are  yet 
neither  subdued  nor  subordinated.  .  .  .  These  are  flat  con- 
tradictions to  state,  and  yet  how  else  can  one  render  the 
paradox  of  the  English  character  and  this  spectacle  of  a 
handful  of  mute,  snobbish,  not  obviously  clever  and  quite 
obviously  ill-educated  men,  holding  together  kingdoms, 
tongues  and  races,  three  hundred  millions  of  them,  in  a 
restless  fermenting  peace?  Again  and  again  in  India  I 
would  find  myself  in  little  circles  of  the  official  English,— 
supercilious,  pretentious,  conventional,  carefully  "turned 
out"  people,  living  gawkily,  thinking  gawkily,  talking 
nothing  but  sport  and  gossip,  relaxing  at  rare  intervals 
into  sentimentality  and  levity  as  mean  as  a  banjo  tune, 
and  a  kind  of  despairful  disgust  would  engulf  me.  And 

236 


THE    BUSINESS   OF   MANKIND 

then  in  some  man's  work,  in  some  huge  irrigation  scheme, 
some  feat  of  strategic  foresight,  some  simple,  penetrating 
realization  of  deep-lying  things,  I  would  find  an  effect, 
as  if  out  of  a  thickly  rusted  sheath  one  had  pulled  a  sword 
and  found  it — flame.  .  .  . 

I  recall  one  evening  I  spent  at  a  little  station  in  Bengal, 
between  Lucknow  and  Delhi,  an  evening  given  over  to 
private  theatricals.  The  theatre  was  a  huge  tent,  and  the 
little  roughly  improvised  stage  was  lit  by  a  row  of  oil 
footlights  and  so  small  as  barely  to  give  a  foothold  for  the 
actors  and  actresses  in  the  more  crowded  scenes.  About 
me  were  the  great  people,  the  colonel's  wife,  a  touring 
young  man  of  family,  officers  and  the  wife  of  the  manager 
of  the  big  sugar  refinery  close  at  hand.  Behind  were 
English  of  a  more  dubious  social  position,  also  connected 
with  the  sugar  refinery,  a  Eurasian  family  or  so,  very 
dressy  and  aggressive  and  terribly  snubbed,  and  then  I 
think  various  Portuguese  and  other  nondescripts  and 
groups  of  non-commissioned  officers  and  men,  some  with 
their  wives.  The  play,  admirably  chosen,  was  that  crys- 
tallization of  liberal  Victorian  snobbery,  Caste,  and  I 
remember  there  was  a  sub-current  of  amusement  because 
the  young  officer  who  played — what  is  the  name  of  the 
hero's  friend?  I  forget  —  had  in  the  haste  of  his  super- 
ficiality adopted  a  moustache  that  would  not  keep  on  and 
an  eyeglass  that  would  not  keep  in. 

Everybody  was  acting  very  badly,  nobody  was  word- 
perfect  and  a  rasping  prompter  would  not  keep  ahead  as 
he  ought  to  have  done;  the  scenery  and  the  make-ups 
were  daubs,  and  I  was  filled  with  amazement  that  having 
quite  wantonly  undertaken  to  do  this  thing  these  people 
could  then  do  it  so  slackly.  Then  a  certain  sudden 
16  237 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

warmth  in  the  applause  about  me  quickened  my  atten- 
tion, and  I  realized  the  satirical  purport  of  drunken  old 
father  Eccles,  and  the  moral  intention  of  his  son-in-law, 
the  plumber.  Between  them  they  expressed  the  whole 
duty  of  the  workingman  as  the  prosperous  Victorians 
conceived  it.  He  was  to  work  hard  always  at  any  job 
he  could  find  for  any  wages  he  could  get,  and  if  he  didn't 
he  was  a  "drunken  shirker"  and  the  dupe  of  "paid 
agitators."  A  comforting  but  misleading  doctrine.  And 
here  were  these  people  a  decade  on  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, with  Time,  Death,  and  Judgment  close  upon  them,  ' 
still  eagerly  applauding,  eager  to  excuse  their  minds  with 
this  one-sided,  ungracious,  old-fashioned  nonsense,  that 
has  done  so  much  to  intensify  the  deepening  class  antag- 
onisms that  strain  us  now  at  home  almost  to  the  breaking 
point ! 

How  amazingly,  it  seemed,  those  people  didn't  under- 
stand and  wouldn't  understand  any  class  but  their  own, 
any  race  but  their  own,  any  usage  other  than  their  use! 
Covertly  I  surveyed  the  colonel's  profile.  It  expressed 
nothing  but  entire  satisfaction  with  these  disastrous  inter- 
pretations. What  a  weather-worn  thought-free  face  that 
grizzled  veteran  showed  the  world! 

I  was  seized  with  a  sudden  curiosity  to  see  how  the 
private  soldiers  behind  me  were  taking  old  Eccles.  I 
turned  round  to  discover  cropped  heads  and  faces  as  ex- 
pressionless as  masks,  and  behind  them  dusky  faces 
watching  very  alertly,  and  then  other  dusky  faces, 
Eurasians,  inferiors,  servants,  natives. 

Then  at  a  sharp  edge  the  glare  of  our  lighting  ceased 
and  the  canvas  walls  of  our  narrow  world  of  illusion 
opened  into  a  vast  blue  twilight.  At  the  opening  stood 

238 


THE    BUSINESS   OF    MANKIND 

two  white-clad  Sikhs,  very,  very  still  and  attentive,  watch- 
ing the  performance,  and  beyond  them  was  a  great  space 
of  sky  over  a  dim  profile  of  trees  and  roofs  and  a  minaret, 
a  sky  darkling  down  to  the  flushed  red  memory — such  a 
short  memory  it  is  in  India — of  a  day  that  had  gone  for 
ever. 

I  remained  staring  at  that  for  some  time. 

"  Isn't  old  Eccles  good?"  whispered  the  colonel's  wife 
beside  me,  and  recalled  me  to  the  play.  .  .  . 

Somehow  that  picture  of  a  narrow  canvas  tent  in  the 
midst  of  immensities  has  become  my  symbol  for  the  whole 
life  of  the  governing  English,  the  English  of  India  and 
Switzerland  and  the  Riviera  and  the  West  End  and  the 
public  services.  .  .  . 

But  they  are  not  England,  they  are  not  the  English 
reality,  which  is  a  thing  at  once  bright  and  illuminating 
and  fitful,  a  thing  humorous  and  wise  and  adventurous 
— Shakespeare,  Dickens,  Newton,  Darwin,  Nelson,  Bacon, 
Shelley — English  names  every  one — like  the  piercing  light 
of  lanterns  swinging  and  swaying  among  the  branches  of 
dark  trees  at  night. 

§5 

I  went  again  to  Ceylon  to  look  into  the  conditions  of 
Coolie  importation,  and  then  I  was  going  back  into 
Assam  once  more,  still  in  the  wake  of  indentured  labor, 
when  I  chanced  upon  a  misadventure.  I  had  my  first 
and  only  experience  of  big  game  shooting  in  the  Garo 
Hills,  I  was  clawed  out  of  a  tree  by  a  wounded  panther, 
he  missed  his  hold  and  I  got  back  to  my  branch,  but  my 
shoulder  was  put  out,  my  thigh  was  badly  torn,  and  my 

239 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

blood  was  poisoned  by  the  wound.  I  had  an  evil  uncom- 
fortable time.  My  injury  hampered  me  greatly,  and  for 
a  while  it  seemed  likely  I  should  be  permanently  lamed. 
I  had  to  keep  to  vehicles  and  reasonably  good  roads. 
I  wound  up  my  convalescence  with  a  voyage  to  Singapore, 
and  from  thence  I  went  on  rather  disconnectedly  to  a 
number  of  exploratory  journeys — excursions  rather  than 
journeys — into  China.  I  got  to  Pekin  and  then  suddenly 
faced  back  to  Europe,  returning  overland  through  Russia. 
I  wanted  now  to  study  the  conditions  of  modern  in- 
dustrialism at  its  sources,  and  my  disablement  did  but  a 
little  accelerate  a  return  already  decided-*t£>on.  I  had 
got  my  conception  of  the  East  as  a  whole  and  of  the 
shape  of  the  historical  process.  I  no  longer  felt  adrift 
in  a  formless  chaos  of  forces.  I  preceived  no^a^ery  clearly 
that  human  life  is  essentially  a  creative  stn^gle  out  of 
the  usage  of  immemorial  years,  that  the  synthesis  of  our 
contemporary  civilization  is  this  creative  impulse  rising 
again  in  its  latest  and  greatest  effort,  the  creative  impulse 
rising  again,  as  a  wave  rises  from  the  trough  of  its  pred- 
ecessors, out  of  the  ruins  of  our  parent  system,  imperial 
Rome.  But  this  time,  and  for  the  first  time,  the  effort  is 
world-wide,  and  China  and  Iceland,  Patagonia  and  Central 
Africa  all  swing  together  with  us  to  make — or  into  another 
catastrophic  failure  to  make — the  Great  State  of  man- 
\  kind.  All  this  I  had  now  distinctly  in  my  mind.  The 
new  process  I  perceive  had  gone  further  in  the  west;  was 
most  developed  in  the  west.  The  lighter  end  lifts  first. 
So  back  I  came  away  from  the  great  body  of  mankind, 
which  is  Asia,  to  its  head.  And  since  I  was  still  held  by 
my  promise  from  returning  to  England  I  betook  myself 
first  to  the  Pas  de  Calais  and  then  to  Belgium  and  thence 

240 


THE    BUSINESS   OF   MANKIND 

into  industrial  Germany,  to  study  the  socialistic  move- 
ment at  its  sources. 

And  I  was  beginning  to  see  too  very  clearly  by  the 
time  of  my  return  that  what  is  confusedly  called  the  labor 
problem  is  really  not  one  problem  at  all,  but  two.  There 
is  the  old  problem,  the  problem  as  old  as  Zimbabwe  and 
the  pyramids,  the  declining  problem,  the  problem  of 
organizing  masses  of  unskilled  labor  to  the  constructive 
ends  of  a  Great  State,  and  there  is  the  new  modification 
due  to  machinery,  which  has  rendered  unskilled  labor  and 
labor  of  a  low  grade  of  skill  almost  unnecessary  to  man- 
kind, added  coal,  oil,  wind  and  water,  the  elementary 
school  and  the  printing-press  to  our  sources  of  power,  and 
superseded  the  ancient  shepherding  and  driving  of  men 
by  the  possibility  of  their  intelligent  and  willing  co-op- 
eration. The  two  are  still  mixed  in  every  discussion, 
even  as  they  are  mixed  in  the  practice  of  life,  but  inev- 
itably they  will  be  disentangled.  We  break  free  from 
slavery,  open  or  disguised,  just  as  we  illuminate  and 
develop  this  disentanglement.  .  .  . 

I  have  long  since  ceased  to  trouble  about  the  economics 
of  human  society.  Ours  are  not  economic  but  psycholog- 
ical difficulties.  There  is  enough  for  everyone,  and  only  a 
fool  can  be  found  to  deny  it.  But  our  methods  of  getting 
and  making  are  still  ruled  by  legal  and  social  traditions 
from  the  time  before  we  had  tapped  these  new  sources  of 
power,  before  there  was  more  than  enough  for  everyone, 
and  when  a  bare  supply  was  only  secured  by  jealous  pos- 
session and  unremitting  toil.  We  have  no  longer  to  secure, 
enough  by  a  stern  insistence.  We  have  come  to  a  plentyj 
The  problem  now  is  to  make  that  plenty  go  round,  an<J 
keep  it  enough  while  we  do. 

241 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

Our  real  perplexities  are  altogether  psychological. 
There  are  no  valid  arguments  against  a  great-spirited 
Socialism  but  this,  that  people  will  not.  Indolence, 
greed,  meanness  of  spirit,  the  aggressiveness  of  authority, 
and  above  all  jealousy,  jealousy  for  our  pride  and  vanity, 
jealousy  for  what  we  -esteem  our  possessions,  jealousy 
for  those  upon  whom  we  have  set  the  heavy  fetters  of 
our  love,  a  jealousy  of  criticism  and  association,  these 
are  the  real  obstacles  to  those  brave  large  reconstructions, 
those  profitable  abnegations  and  brotherly  feats  of 
generosity  that  will  yet  turn  human  life — of  which  our 
individual  lives  are  but  the  momentary  parts — into  a 
glad,  beautiful  and  triumphant  co-operation  all  round  this 
sunlit  world. 
|  If  but  humanity  could  have  its  imagination  touched 

I  was  already  beginning  to  see  the  great  problem  of 
mankind  as  indeed  nothing  other  than  a  magnification 
of  the  little  problem  of  myself,  as  a  problem  in  escape 
from  grooves,  from  preoccupations  and  suspicions,  pre- 
cautions and  ancient  angers,  a  problem  of  escape  from 
these  spiritual  beasts  that  prowl  and  claw,  to  a  new 
generosity  and  a  new  breadth  of  view. 

For  all  of  us,  little  son,  as  for  each  of  us,  salvation  is 
that.  We  have  to  get  away  from  ourselves  to  a  greater 
thing,  to  a  giant's  desire  and  an  unending  life,  ours  and 
yet  not  our  own. 

§6 

fit  is  a  queer  experience  to  be  even  for  a  moment  in  the 
grip  of  a  great  beast.  I  had  been  put  into  the  fork  of  a 
tree,  so  that  I  could  shoot  with  the  big  stem  behind  my 

242 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    MANKIND 

back.  The  fork  wasn't,  I  suppose,  more  than  a  score 
of  feet  from  the  ground.  It  was  a  safe  enough  place 
from  a  tiger,  and  that  is  what  we  expected.  We  had  been 
misled  by  our  tracker,  who  had  mistaken  the  pugs  of  a 
big  leopard  for  a  tiger's, — they  were  over  rocky  ground 
for  the  most  part  and  he  had  only  the  spoor  of  a  chance 
patch  of  half-dried  mud  to  go  upon.  The  beast  had  killed 
a  goat  and  was  beaten  out  of  a  thicket  near  by  me  in 
which  he  had  been  lying  up.  The  probability  had  seemed 
that  he  would  go  away  along  a  tempting  ravine  to  where 
Captain  Crosby,  who  was  my  host,  awaited  him;  I,  as  the 
amateur,  was  intended  to  be  little  more  than  a  spectator. 
But  he  broke  back  towards  the  wing  of  the  line  of  beaters 
and  came  across  the  sunlit  rocks  within  thirty  yards  of  my 
post. 

Seen  going  along  in  that  way,  flattened  almost  to  the 
ground,  he  wasn't  a  particularly  impressive  beast,  and  I 
shot  at  his  shoulder  as  one  might  blaze  away  at  a  rabbit, — 
perhaps  just  a  little  more  carefully,  feeling  as  a  Lord 
of  Creation  should  who  dispenses  a  merited  death.  I 
expected  him  either  to  roll  over  or  bolt. 

Then  instantly  he  was  coming  in  huge  bounds  towards 
me.  .  .  . 

He  came  so  rapidly  that  he  was  covered  by  the  big  limb 
of  the  tree  on  which  I  was  standing  until  he  was  quite 
beneath  me,  and  my  second  shot,  which  I  thought  in  the 
instant  must  have  missed  him,  was  taken  rapidly  as  he 
crouched  to  spring  up  the  trunk. 

Then  you  know  came  a  sort  of  astonishment,  and  I 
think, — because  afterwards  Crosby  picked  up  a  dropped 
cartridge  at  the  foot  of  the  tree — that  I  tried  to  reload. 
I  believe  I  was  completely  incredulous  that  the  beast 

243 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

was  going  to  have  me  until  he  actually  got  me.  The 
\  thing  was  too  completely  out  of  my  imaginative  picture. 
I  don't  believe  I  thought  at  all  while  he  was  coming  up 
the  tree.  I  merely  noted  how  astonishingly  he  resembled 
an  angry  cat.  Then  he'd  got  my  leg,  he  was  hanging 
von  to  it  first  by  two  claws  and  then  by  one  claw,  and 
the  whole  weight  of  him  was  pulling  me  down.  It 
didn't  seem  to  be  my  leg.  I  wasn't  frightened,  I  felt 
absolutely  nothing,  I  was  amazed.  I  slipped,  tried  to 
get  a  hold  on  the  tree  trunk,  felt  myself  being  hauled 
down,  and  then  got  my  arm  about  the  branch.  I  still 
clung  to  my  unloaded  gun  as  an  impoverished  aristocrat 
might  cling  to  his  patent  of  nobility.  That  was,  I  felt, 
my  answer  for  him  yet. 

I  suppose  the  situation  lasted  a  fraction  of  a  second, 
though  it  seemed  to  me  to  last  an  interminable  time. 
Then  I  could  feel  my  leggings  rip  and  his  claw  go  scoring 
deeply  down  my  calf.  That  hurt  in  a  kind  of  painless, 
impersonal  interesting  way.  Was  my  leg  coming  off? 
Boot?  The  weight  had  gone,  that  enormous  weight! 

He'd  missed  his  hold  altogether!  I  heard  his  claws 
tear  down  the  bark  of  the  tree  and  then  his  heavy,  soft 
fall  upon  the  ground. 

I  achieved  a  cat-like  celerity.  In  another  second  I 
was  back  in  my  fork  reloading,  my  legs  tucked  up  as 
tightly  as  possible. 

I  peered  down  through  the  branches  ready  for  him. 
He  wasn't  there.  Not  up  the  tree  again?  .  .  .  Then  I 
saw  him  making  off,  with  a  halting  gait,  across  the  scorch- 
ing rocks  some  thirty  yards  away,  but  I  could  not  get  my 
gun  into  a  comfortable  position  before  he  was  out  of  sight 
behind  a  ridge.  ...  I  wondered  why  the  sunlight  seemed 

244 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   MANKIND 

to  be  flickering  like  an  electric  light  that  fails,  was  some- 
how aware  of  blood  streaming  from  my  leg  down  the  tree- 
stem;  it  seemed  a  torrent  of  blood,  and  there  was  a  long, 
loose  ribbon  of  flesh  very  sickening  to  see;  and  then  I 
fainted  and  fell  out  of  the  tree,  bruising  my  arm  and 
cheek  badly  and  dislocating  my  shoulder  in  the  fall.  .  .  . 
Some  of  the  beaters  saw  me  fall,  and  brought  Crosby  in 
sufficient  time  to  improvise  a  torniquet  and  save  my  life. 


CHAPTER  THE   NINTH 
THE  SPIRIT  OP  THE  NEW  WORLD 


1MET  Rachel  again  in  Germany  through  the  devices 
of  my  cousin  the  Furstin  Letzlingen.  I  had  finished 
seeing  what  I  wanted  to  see  in  Westphalia  and  I  was 
preparing  to  go  to  the  United  States.  There  I  thought 
I  should  be  able  to  complete  and  round  off  that  large 
view  of  the  human  process  I  had  been  developing  in  my 
mind.  But  my  departure  was  delayed  by  an  attack  of 
influenza  that  I  picked  up  at  a  Socialist  Congress  in 
Munich,  and  the  dear  Durchlaucht,  hearing  of  this  and 
having  her  own  views  of  my  destiny,  descended  upon  me 
while  I  was  still  in  bed  there,  made  me  get  up  and  carried 
me  off  in  her  car,  to  take  care  of  me  herself  at  her  villa 
at  Boppard,  telling  me  nothing  of  any  fellow-guests  I 
might  encounter. 

She  had  a  villa  upon  the  Rhine  under  a  hill  of  vine- 
yards, where  she  devoted  herself — she  was  a  widow — to 
matchmaking  and  belated  regrets  for  the  childlessness  that 
necessitated  a  perpetual  borrowing  of  material  for  her 
pursuit.  She  had  a  motor-car,  a  steam-launch,  several 
rowing  boats  and  canoes,  a  tennis-lawn,  a  rambling 
garden,  a  devious  house  and  a  rapid  mind,  and  in  fact 

246 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

everything  that  was  necessary  for  throwing  young  people 
together.  She  made  her  surprise  seem  easy  and  natural, 
and  with  returning  health  I  found  myself  already  back 
upon  my  old  footing  of  friendly  intimacy  with  Rachel. 

I  found  her  a  new  and  yet  a  familiar  Rachel.  She  had 
grown  up,  she  was  no  longer  a  schoolgirl,  crystalline 
clear  with  gleams  of  emotion  and  understanding,  and  what 
she  had  lost  in  transparency  she  had  gained  in  depth. 
And  she  had  become  well-informed,  she  had  been  reading 
very  widely  and  well,  I  could  see,  and  not  simply  read- 
ing but  talking  and  listening  and  thinking.  She  showed  a 
vivid  interest  in  the  current  of  home  politics, — at  that 
time  the  last  government  of  Mr.  Balfour  was  ebbing  to 
its  end  and  my  old  Transvaal  friends,  the  Chinese  coolies, 
were  to  avenge  themselves  on  their  importers.  The 
Tariff  Reformers  my  father  detested  were  still  struggling 
to  unseat  the  Premier  from  his  leadership  of  Conserva- 
tism. .  .  . 

It  was  queer  to  hear  once  more,  after  my  Asiatic 
wanderings  and  dreamings,  those  West-End  dinner-table 
politics,  those  speculations  about  "Winston's"  future  and 
the  possibility  of  Lloyd  George  or  Ramsay  Macdonald  or 
Macnamara  taking  office  with  the  Liberals  and  whether 
there  might  not  ultimately  be  a  middle  party  in  which 
Haldane  and  Balfour,  Grey  and  the  Cecils  could  meet 
upon  common  ground.  It  seemed  now  not  only  very 
small  but  very  far  off.  She  told  me  too  of  the  huge 
popularity  of  King  Edward.  He  had  proved  to  be 
interested,  curious,  understanding  and  clever,  an  unex- 
pectedly successful  King.  She  described  how  he  was 
breaking  out  of  the  narrow  official  limits  that  had  kept 
his  mother  in  a  kind  of  social  bandbox,  extending  his 

247 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

solvent  informality  of  friendliness  to  all  sorts  of  men. 
He  had  won  the  heart  of  Will  Crooks,  the  labor  member  for 
Poplar,  for  example,  made  John  Burns  a  social  success 
and  warmed  all  France  for  England. 

I  surveyed  this  novel  picture  of  the  English  throne 
diffusing  amiability. 

"I  suppose  it's  what  the  throne  ought  to  do,"  said 
Rachel.  "If  it  can't  be  inspiration,  at  any  rate  it  can 
tolerate  and  reconcile  and  take  the  ill-bred  bitterness  out 
of  politics." 

"My  father  might  have  said  that." 

"I  got  that  from  your  father,"  she  said;  and  added 
after  a  momentary  pause,  "I  go  over  and  talk  to  him." 

"You  talk  to  my  father!" 

"  I  like  to.  Or  rather  I  listen  and  take  it  in.  I  go  over 
in  the  afternoon.  I  go  sometimes  twice  or  three  times  a 
week." 

"That's  kind  of  you." 

"Not  at  all.  You  see It  sounds  impudent,  I 

know,  for  a  girl  to  say  so,  but  we've  so  many  interests  in 
common." 

§2 

I  was  more  and  more  interested  by  Rachel  as  the  days 
went  on.  A  man  must  be  stupid  who  does  not  know 
that  a  woman  is  happy  in  his  presence,  and  for  two  years 
now  and  more  I  had  met  no  one  with  a  very  strong 
personal  feeling  for  me.  And  quite  apart  from  that,  her 
mind  was  extraordinarily  interesting  to  me  because  it 
was  at  once  so  active  and  so  clear  and  so  limited  by  her 
entirely  English  circumstances.  She  had  the  prosperous 

248 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

English  outlook.  She  didn't  so  much  see  the  wide  world 
as  get  glimpses  of  it  through  the  tangle  of  Westminster 
and  of  West  End  and  week-end  limitations.  She  wasn't 
even  aware  of  that  greater  unprosperous  England,  already 
sulking  and  darkling  outside  her  political  world,  that 
greater  England  which  was  presently  to  make  its  first 
audible  intimations  of  discontent  in  that  remarkable  anti- 
climax to  King  George's  Coronation,  the.  Railway  Strike. 
India  for  her  was  the  land  of  people's  cousins,  Germany 
and  the  German  Dreadnoughts  bulked  far  larger,  and  all 
the  tremendous  gathering  forces  of  the  East  were  beyond 
the  range  of  her  imagination.  I  set  myself  to  widen  her 
horizons. 

I  told  her  something  of  the  intention  and  range  of  my 
travels,  and  something  of  the  views  that  were  growing  out 
of  their  experiences. 

I  have  a  clear  little  picture  in  my  mind  of  an  excursion 
we  made  to  that  huge  national  Denkmal  which  rears  its 
head  out  of  the  amiable  vineyards  of  Assmannshausen  and 
Rudesheim  over  against  Bingen.  We  landed  at  the  former 
place,  went  up  its  little  funicular  to  eat  our  lunch  and 
drink  its  red  wine  at  the  pleasant  inn  above,  and  then 
strolled  along  through  the  woods  to  the  monument. 

The  Furstin  fell  behind  with  her  unwilling  escort,  a 
newly  arrived  medical  student  from  England,  a  very 
pleasant  youngster  named  Berwick,  who  was  all  too  ob- 
viously anxious  to  change  places  with  me.  She  devised 
delays,  and  meanwhile  I,  as  yet  unaware  of  the  state  of 
affairs,  went  on  with  Rachel  to  that  towering  florid 
monument  with  its  vast  gesticulating  Germania,  which 
triumphs  over  the  conquered  provinces. 

We  fell  talking  of  war  and  the  passions  and  delusions 
249 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

that  lead  to  war.  Rachel's  thoughts  were  strongly  col- 
ored by  those  ideas  of  a  natural  rivalry  between  Germany 
and  England  and  of  a  necessary  revenge  for  France  which 
have  for  nearly  forty  years  diverted  the  bulk  of  European 
thought  and  energy  to  the  mere  waste  of  military  prepara- 
tions. I  jarred  with  an  edifice  of  preconceptions  when  I 
scoffed  and  scolded  at  these  assumptions. 

4 'Our  two  great  peoples  are  disputing  for  the  leader- 
ship of  the  world,"  I  said,  "and  meanwhile  the  whole 
world  sweeps  past  us.  We're  drifting  into  a  quarrelsome 
backwater." 

I  began  to  tell  of  the  fermentation  and  new  beginnings 
that  were  everywhere  perceptible  throughout  the  East, 
of  the  vast  masses  of  human  ability  and  energy  that  were 
coming  into  action  in  China  and  India,  of  the  unlimited 
future  of  both  North  and  South  America,  of  the  mere 
accidentalness  of  the  European  advantage.  "History," 
I  said,  "is  already  shifting  the  significance  out  of  Western 
Europe  altogether,  and  we  English  cannot  see  it;  we  can 
see  no  further  than  Berlin,  and  these  Germans  can  think 
of  nothing  better  than  to  taunt  the  French  with  such 
tawdry  effigies  as  this!  Europe  goes  on  to-day  as  India 
went  on  in  the  eighteenth  century,  making  aimless  history. 
And  the  sands  of  tfppfortunity  run  and  run.  ..." 

I  shrugged  my  shoulders  and  we  stood  for  a  little 
while  looking  down  on  the  shining  crescent  of  the 
Rhine. 

"Suppose,"  said  Rachel,  "that  someone  were  to  say 
that — in  the  House." 

"The  House,"  I  said,  "doesn't  hear  things  at  my  pitch. 
Bat  outcries.  Too  shrill  altogether." 

"It  might.     If  you " 

250 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

She  halted,  hesitated  for  a  moment  on  the  question  and 
asked  abruptly: 

"  When  are  you  coming  back  to  England,  Mr.  Stratton?" 

"  Certainly  not  for  six  months,"  I  said. 

A  movement  of  her  eyes  made  me  aware  of  the  Fiirstin 
and  Berwick  emerging  from  the  trees.  "And  then?" 
asked  Rachel. 

I  didn't  want  to  answer  that  question,  in  which  the  per- 
sonal note  sounded  so  clearly.  "I  am  going  to  America 
to  see  America,"  I  said,  "and  America  may  be  rather  a 
big  thing  to  see." 

"You  must  see  it?" 

"I  want  to  be  sure  of  it — as  something  comprehensive. 
I  want  to  get  a  general  effect  of  it.  .  .  ." 

Rachel  hesitated,  looked  back  to  measure  the  distance 
of  the  Fiirstin  and  her  companion  and  put  her  question 
again,  but  this  time  with  a  significance  that  did  not  seem 
even  to  want  to  hide  itself.  "  Then  will  you  come  back?" 
she  said. 

Her  face  flamed  scarlet,  but  her  eyes  met  mine  boldly. 
Between  us  there  was  a  flash  of  complete  understanding. 

My  answer,  if  it  was  lame  and  ungallant  to  such  a 
challenge,  was  at  least  perfectly  honest.  "I  can't  make 
up  my  mind,"  I  said.  "I've  been  near  making  plans — 
taking  steps.  .  .  .  Something  holds  me  back.  ..." 

I  had  no  time  for  an  explanation. 

"I  can't  make  up  my  mind,"  I  repeated. 

She  stood  for  a  moment  rather  stiffly,  staring  away 
towards  the  blue  hills  of  Alsace. 

Then  she  turned  with  a  smiling  and  undisturbed 
countenance  to  the  Fiirstin.  Her  crimson  had  given 
place  to  white.  "The  triumph  of  it,"  she  said  with  a 

251 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

slight  gesture  to  the  flamboyant  Teutonism  that  towered 
over  us,  and  boldly  repeating  words  I  had  used  scarcely 
&VQ  minutes  before,  "  makes  me  angry.  They  con- 
quered— ungraciously.  .  .  ." 

She  had  overlooked  something  in  her  effort  to  seem  en- 
tirely self-possessed.  She  collapsed.  "My  dear!"  she 
cried— "I  forgot!" 

"Oh!  I'm  only  a  German  by  marriage!"  cried  the 
Furstin.  "And  I  can  assure  you  I  quite  understand — 
about  the  triumph  of  it.  .  .  ."  She  surveyed  the  achieve- 
ment of  her  countrymen.  "It  is — ungracious.  But 
indeed  it's  only  a  sort  of  artlessness  if  you  see  the  thing 
properly.  .  .  .  It's  not  vulgarity — it's  childishness.  .  .  . 
They've  hardly  got  over  it  yet — their  intense  astonish- 
ment at  being  any  good  at  war.  .  .  .  That  large  throaty 
Victory!  She's  not  so  militant  as  she  seems.  She's  too 
plump.  ...  Of  course  what  a  German  really  appreciates  is 
nutrition.  But  I  quite  agree  with  you  both.  .  .  .I'm  be- 
ginning to  want  my  tea,  Mr.  Stratton.  .  .  .  Rachel!" 

Her  eyes  had  been  on  Rachel  as  she  chattered.  The 
girl  had  turned  to  the  distant  hills  again,  and  had  for- 
gotten even  to  pretend  to  listen  to  the  answer  she  had 
evoked.  Now  she  came  back  sharply  to  the  sound  of  her 
name. 

"Tea?"  said  the  Furstin. 

"Oh!"  cried  Rachel.  "Yes.  Yes,  certainly.  Rather. 
Tea." 

§3 

It  was  clear  to  me  that  after  that  I  must  as  people  say 
"have  things  out"  with  Rachel.  But  before  I  could  do 

252 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

anything  of  the  sort  the  Furstin  pounced  upon  me.  She 
made  me  sit  up  that  night  after  her  other  guests  had  gone 
to  their  rooms,  in  the  cosy  little  turret  apartment  she  called* 
her  study  and  devoted  to  the  reading  of  whatever  was  most 
notorious  in  contemporary  British  fiction.  "Sit  down," 
said  she,  "by  the  fire  in  that  chair  there  and  tell  me  all 
about  it.  It's  no  good  your  pretending  you  don't  know 
what  I  mean.  What  are  you  up  to  with  her,  and  why 
don't  you  go  straight  to  your  manifest  destiny  as  a  decent 
man  should?" 

"Because  manifestly  it  isn't  my  destiny,"  I  said. 

"Stuff,"  said  the  Furstin. 

"You  know  perfectly  well  why  I  am  out  of  England." 

"Everybody  knows — except  of  course  quite  young 
persons  who  are  being  carefully  brought  up." 

"Does  she  know?" 

"She  doesn't  seem  to." 

"Well,  that's  what  I  want  to  know." 

"Need  she  know?" 

"Well,  it  does  seem  rather  essential " 

"I  suppose  if  you  think  so " 

"Will  you  tell  her?" 

"Tell  her  yourself,  if  she  must  be  told.  Down  there  in 
Surrey,  she  must  have  seen  things  and  heard  things.  But 
I  don't  see  that  she  wants  a  lot  of  ancient  history." 

"  If  it  is  ancient  history !" 

"Oh!  two  years  and  a  half, — it's  an  Era." 

I  made  no  answer  to  that,  but  sat  staring  into  the  fire 
while  my  cousin  watched  my  face.  At  length  I  made  my 
confession.  "I  don't  think  it  is  ancient  history  at  all," 
I  said.  "  I  think  if  I  met  Mary  again  now "  / 

"You  mean  Lady  Mary  Justin?" 
17  253 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

"Of  course." 

"It  would  be  good  for  your  mind  if  you  remembered 
to  call  her  by  her  proper  name.  .  .  .  You  think  if  you  met 
her  again  you  two  would  begin  to  carry  on.  But  you  see, 
— you  aren't  going  to  meet  her.  Everybody  will  see  that 
doesn't  happen. " 

"I  mean  that  I Well " 

"You'd  better  not  say  it.  Besides,  it's  nonsense.  I 
doubt  if  you've  given  her  a  thought  for  weeks  and  weeks." 

"Until  I  came  here  perhaps  that  was  almost  nearly 
true.  But  you've  stirred  me  up,  sweet  cousin,  and  old 
things,  old  memories  and  habits  have  come  to  the  surface 
again.  Mary  wrote  herself  over  my  life — in  all  sorts  of 
places.  ...  I  can't  tell  you.  I've  never  talked  of  her  to 
anyone.  I'm  not  able,  very  well,  to  talk  about  my  feel- 
ings. .  .  .  Perhaps  a  man  of  my  sort — doesn't  love  twice 
over." 

I  disregarded  a  note  of  dissent  from  my  cousin.  "That 
was  all  so  magic,  all  my  youth,  all  my  hope,  all  the  splen- 
did adventure  of  it.  Why  should  one  pretend?  ...  I'm 
giving  none  of  that  to  Rachel.  It  isn't  there  any  more  to 
give.  .  .  ." 

"One  would  think,"  remarked  the  Furstin,  "there  was 
no  gift  of  healing." 

She  waited  for  me  to  speak,  and  then  irritated  by  my 
silence  struck  at  me  sharply  with  that  wicked  little  tongue 
of  hers. 

"  Do  you  think  that  Lady  Mary  Justin  thinks  of  you — as 
you  think  of  her?  Do  you  think  she  hasn't  settled  down?" 

I  looked  up  at  her  quickly. 

"She's  just  going  to  have  a  second  child,"  the  Furstin 
flung  out. 

254 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

Yes,  that  did  astonish  me.  I  suppose  my  face  showed 
it. 

1  'That  girl,"  said  the  Furstin,  "that  clean  girl  would 
have  sooner  died — ten  thousand  deaths.  .  .  .  And  she's 
never — never  been  anything  to  you." 

I  think  that  for  an  instant  she  had  been  frightened  at 
her  own  words.  She  was  now  quite  angry  and  short  of 
breath.  She  had  contrived  a  rapid  indignation  against 
Mary  and  myself. 

"I  didn't  know  Mary  had  had  any  child  at  all,"  I 
said. 

"This  makes  two,"  said  the  Furstin,  and  held  up  a 
brace  of  fingers,  "with  scarcely  a  year  and  a  half  between 
them.  Not  much  more  anyhow.  ...  It  was  natural,  I 
suppose.  A  natural  female  indecency.  I  don't  blame 
her.  When  a  woman  gives  in  she  ought  to  do  it  thorough- 
ly. But  I  don't  see  that  it  leaves  you  much  scope  for 
philandering,  Stephen,  does  it? ...  And  there  you  are,  and 
here  is  Rachel.  And  why  don't  you  make  a  clean  job  of 
your  life?  .  .  ." 

"I  didn't  understand." 

"  I  wonder  what  you  imagined." 

I  reflected.  "I  wonder  what  I  did.  I  suppose  I 
thought  of  Mary — just  as  I  had  left  her — always." 

I  remained  with  my  mind  filled  with  confused  images 
of  Mary,  memories,  astonishment.  .  .  . 

I  perceived  the  Furstin  was  talking. 

"Maundering  about,"  she  was  saying,  "like  a  hunts- 
man without  a  horse.  .  .  .  You've  got  work  to  do — blood 
in  your  veins.  I'm  not  one  of  your  ignorant  women, 
Stephen.  You  ought  to  have  a  wife.  .  .  ." 

"Rachel's  too  good,"  I  said,  at  the  end  of  a  pause  and 
255 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

perceiving  I  had  to  say  something,  "to  be  that  sort  of 
wife." 

"No  woman's  too  good  for  a  man,"  said  the  Furstin 
von  Letzlingen  with  conviction.  "It's  what  God  made 
her  for." 

§4 

My  visit  to  Boppard  was  drawing  to  an  end  before 
I  had  a  clear  opportunity  to  have  things  out  with  Rachel. 
It  was  in  a  little  garden,  under  the  very  shadow  of  that 
gracious  cathedral  at  Worms,  the  sort  of  little  garden  to 
which  one  is  admitted  by  ringing  a  bell  and  tipping  a 
custodian.  I  think  Worms  is  in  many  respects  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  cathedrals  I  have  ever  seen,  so  perfectly  pro- 
portioned, so  delicately  faded,  so  aloof,  so  free  from  pride 
or  presumption,  and  it  rises  over  this  green  and  flowery 
peace,  a  towering,  lithe,  light  brown,  sunlit,  easy  thing, 
as  unconsciously  and  irrelevantly  splendid  as  a  tall  ship 
in  the  evening  glow  under  a  press  of  canvas.  We  looked 
up  at  it  for  a  time  and  then  went  on  with  the  talk  to  which 
we  had  been  coming  slowly  since  the  Furstin  had  packed 
us  off  for  it,  while  she  went  into  the  town  with  Berwick  to 
buy  toys  for  her  gatekeeper's  children.  I  had  talked 
about  myself,  and  the  gradual  replacement  of  my  am- 
bition to  play  a  part  in  imperial  politics  by  wider  inten- 
tions. "You  know,"  I  asked  abruptly,  "why  I  left 
England?" 

She  thought  through  the  briefest  of  pauses.  "No," 
she  decided  at  last. 

"I  made  love,7'  I  said,  "to  Lady  Mary  Justin,  and  we 

were  found  out.    We  couldn't  go  away  together " 

256 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

"  Why  not?"  she  interjected. 

"It  was  impossible." 

For  some  moments  neither  of  us  spoke.  "  Something," 
she  said,  and  then,  "Some  vague  report,"  and  left  these 
fragments  to  be  her  reply. 

"We  were  old  playmates;  we  were  children  together. 
We  have — something — that  draws  us  to  each  other. 
She — she  made  a  mistake  in  marrying.  We  were  both 
very  young  and  the  situation  was  difficult.  And  then 
afterwards  we  were  thrown  together.  .  .  .  But  you  see  that 
has  made  a  great  difference  to  my  life;  it's  turned  me  off 
the  rails  on  which  men  of  my  sort  usually  run.  I've  had 
to  look  to  these  other  things.  .  .  .  They've  become  more 
to  me  than  to  most  people  if  only  because  of  that.  .  .  /' 

"You  mean  these  ideas  of  yours— learning  as  much 
as  you  can  about  the  world,  and  then  doing  what  you 
can  to  help  other  people  to  a  better  understanding." 

"Yes,"  I  said. 

"And  that— will  fill  your  life." 

"It  ought  to." 

"I  suppose  it  ought.    I  suppose — you  find — it  does." 

"Don't  you  think  it  ought  to  fill  my  life?" 

"I  wondered  if  it  did." 

"But  why  shouldn't  it?" 

"It's  so— so  cold." 

My  questioning  silence  made  her  attempt  to  explain. 

"One  wants  life  more  beautiful  than  that,"  she  said. 

"One  wants There  are   things  one  needs,  things 

nearer  one." 

'  We  became  aware  of  a  jangling  at  the  janitor's  bell. 
Our  opportunity  for  talk  was  slipping  away.  And  we 
were  both  still  undecided,  both  blunderingly  nervous 

257 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

and  insecure.     We   were   hurried   into   clumsy   phrases 
that  afterwards  we  would  have  given  much  to  recall. 

"But  how  could  life  be  more  beautiful,"  I  said,  "than 
when  it  serves  big  human  ends?" 

Her  brows  were  knit.  She  seemed  to  be  listening 
for  the  sound  of  the  unlocking  gate. 

"But,"  she  said,  and  plunged,  "one  wants  to  be  loved. 
Surely  one  needs  that." 

"You  see,  for  me — that's  gone." 

"Why  should  it  be  gone?" 

"It  is.  One  doesn't  begin  again.  I  mean  —  myself. 
You — can.  You've  never  begun.  Not  when  you've  loved 
— loved  really."  I  forced  that  on  her.  I  over  empha- 
sized. "It  was  real  love,  you  know;  the  real  thing.  .  .  . 
I  don't  mean  the  mere  imaginative  love,  blindfold  love, 
but  love  that  sees.  ...  I  want  you  to  understand  that. 
I  loved — altogether.  ..." 

Across  the  lawn  under  its  trim  flowering-trees  appeared 
Berwick  loaded  with  little  parcels,  and  manifestly  eager 
to  separate  us,  and  the  Furstin  as  manifestly  putting  on  the 
drag. 

"There's  a  sort  of  love,"  I  hurried,  "that  doesn't  renew 
itself  ever.  Don't  let  yourself  believe  it  does.  Some- 
thing else  may  come  in  its  place,  but  that  is  different. 
It's  youth, — a  wonderful  newness.  .  .  .  Look  at  that 
youngster.  He  can  love  you  like  that.  I've  watched 
him.  He  does.  You  know  he  does.  ..." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  as  hurriedly;  "but  then,  you  see,  I 
don't  love  him." 

"You  don't?" 

"I  can't." 

"But  he's  such  a  fresh  clean  human  being " 

258 


THE    NEW   WORLD 

" That's  not  all,"  said  Rachel.  "That's  not  all.  .  .  . 
You  don't  understand." 

The  two  drew  near.  * '  It  is  so  hard  to  explain, ' '  she  said. 
"Things  that  one  hardly  sees  for  oneself.  Sometimes  it 
seems  one  cannot  help  oneself.  You  can't  choose.  You 
are  taken.  ..."  She  seemed  about  to  say  something 
more,  and  stopped  and  bit  her  lip. 

In  another  moment  I  was  standing  up,  and  the  Furstin 
was  calling  to  us  across  ten  feet  of  space.  "Such  amoosin' 
little  toyshops.  We've  got  a  heap  of  things.  Just  look 
at  him!" 

He  smiled  over  his  load  with  anxious  eyes  upon  our 
faces. 

"Ten  separate  parcels,"  he  said,  appealing  for  Rachel's 
sympathy.  "I'm  doing  my  best  not  to  complain." 

And  rather  adroitly  he  contrived  to  let  two  of  them  slip, 
and  captured  Rachel  to  assist  him. 

He  didn't  relinquish  her  again. 


§5 

The  Furstin  and  I  followed  them  along  the  broad, 
pleasant,  tree-lined  street  towards  the  railway  station. 

"A  boy  of  that  age  ought  not  to  marry  a  girl  of  that 
age,"  said  the  Furstin,  breaking  a  silence. 

I  didn't  answer. 

"Well?"  she  said,  domineering.  ^c 

"My  dear  cousin,"  I  said,  "I  know  all  that 
in  your  mind.     I  admit — I  covet  her.     You  cangine 
me  more  jealous  than  I  am.     She's  clean  and,n  so 
it  is  marvellous  how  the  God  of  the  rest  of  the  * 

259 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

have  made  a  thing  so  brave  and  honest  and  wonderful. 
She's  better  than  flowers.  But  I  think  I'm  going  away 
to-night,  nevertheless." 

"You  don't  mean  you're  going  to  carry  chivalry  to 
the  point  of  giving  that  boy  a  chance — for  he  hasn't 
one  while  you're  about." 

"No.  You  see — I  want  to  give  Rachel  a  chance. 
You  know  as  well  as  I  do — the  things  in  my  mind." 

"That  you've  got  to  forget." 

"That  I  don't  forget." 

"That  you're  bound  in  honor  to  forget.  And  who 
could  help  you  better?" 

"I'm  going,"  I  said  and  then,  wrathfully,  "If  you  think 
I  want  to  use  Rachel  as  a  sort  of  dressing — for  my  old 
sores " 

I  left  the  sentence  unfinished. 

"Oh  nonsense!"  cried  the  Furstin,  and  wouldn't  speak 
to  me  again  until  we  got  to  that  entirely  Teutonic 
"art"  station  that  is  not  the  least  among  the  sights  of 
Worms. 

"Sores,  indeed!"  said  the  Furstin  presently,  as  we 
walked  up  the  end  of  the  platform. 

"There's  nothing,"  said  the  Furstin,  with  an  unusual 
note  of  petulance,  "she'd  like  better." 

"I  can't  think  what  men  are  coming  to,"  she  went  on. 
"You're  in  love  with  her,  or  you  wouldn't  be  so  generous. 
And  she's  head  over  heels  with  you.  And  here  you  are! 

''11  give  you  one  more  chance " 

don't  yon't  take  it,"  I  interrupted.     "It  isn't  fair.     I  tell 

"Yot[°n't  take  it.     I'll  go  two  days  earlier  to  prevent 

"I  cai^ss  you  promise  me Of  course  I  see  how 

"But  >e  with  her.     She's  not  a  sphinx.     But  it  isn't 

260 
\ 


THE    NEW   WORLD 

fair.  It  isn't.  Not  to  her,  or  to  him — or  myself.  He's 
got  some  claims.  He's  got  more  right  to  her  than  I.  .  .  ." 

1 1 A  boy  like  that !  No  man  has  any  rights  about  women 
— until  he's  thirty.  And  as  for  me  and  all  the  pains  I've 

taken Oh!  I  hate  Worms.  Dust  and  ashes!  Well 

here  thank  heaven!  comes  the  train.  If  nothing  else 
could  stir  you,  Stephen,  at  least  I  could  have  imagined 
some  decent  impulse  of  gratitude  to  me.  Stephen,  you're 
disgusting.  You've  absolutely  spoilt  this  trip  for  me — 
absolutely.  When  only  a  little  reasonableness  on  your 
part Oh!" 

She  left  her  sentence  unfinished. 

Berwick  and  I  had  to  make  any  conversation  that 
was  needed  on  the  way  back  to  Boppard.  Rachel  did  not 
talk  and  the  Furstin  did  not  want  to. 


§6 

Directly  I  had  parted  from  Rachel's  questioning  eyes 
I  wanted  to  go  back  to  them.  It  seems  to  me  now  that 
all  the  way  across  to  America,  in  that  magnificent  German 
liner  I  joined  at  Hamburg,  I  was  thinking  in  confused 
alternations  of  her  and  of  Mary.  There  are  turns  of 
thought  that  still  bring  back  inseparably  with  them  the 
faint  echo  of  the  airs  of  the  excellent  but  industrious  band 
that  glorified  our  crossing. 

I  had  been  extraordinarily  shocked  and  concerned  at 
the  thought  of  Mary  bearing  children.  It  is  a  grotesque 
thing  to  confess  but  I  had  never  let  myself  imagine  the 
possibility  of  such  a  thing  for  her  who  had  been  so  im- 
mensely mine.  .  .  . 

261 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

We  are  the  oddest  creatures,  little  son,  beasts  and 
barbarians  and  brains,  neither  one  nor  the  other  but  all 
confusedly,  and  here  was  I  who  had  given  up  Mary  and 
resigned  her  and  freed  myself  from  her  as  I  thought  al- 
together, cast  back  again  into  my  old  pit  by  the  most 
obvious  and  necessary  consequence  of  her  surrender  and 
mine.  And  it's  just  there  and  in  that  relation  that  we  men 
and  women  are  so  elaborately  insecure.  We  try  to  love 
as  equals  and  behave  as  equals  and  concede  a  level 
freedom,  and  then  comes  a  crisis, — our  laboriously  con- 
trived edifice  of  liberty  collapses  and  we  perceive  that  so 
far  as  sex  goes  the  woman  remains  to  the  man  no  more 
than  a  possession — capable  of  loyalty  or  treachery. 

There,  still  at  that  barbaric  stage,  the  situation  stands. 
You  see  I  had  always  wanted  to  own  Mary,  and  always 
she  had  disputed  that.  That  is  our  whole  story,  the 
story  of  an  instinctive  subjugation  struggling  against  a 
passionate  desire  for  fellowship.  She  had  denied  herself 
to  me,  taken  herself  away;  that  much  I  could  endure; 
but  now  came  this  blazing  fact  that  showed  her  as  it  seemed 
in  the  most  material  and  conclusive  way — overcome.  I 
had  storms  of  retrospective  passion  at  the  thoroughness  of 
her  surrender.  .  .  .  Yes,  and  that's  in  everyone  of  us, — 
in  everyone.  I  wonder  if  in  all  decent  law-abiding  London 
there  lives  a  single  healthy  adult  man  who  has  not  at 
times  longed  to  trample  and  kill.  .  .  . 

For  once  I  think  theFurstin  miscalculated  consequences. 
I  think  I  should  have  engaged  myself  to  Rachel  before 
I  went  to  America  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  Furstin's 
revelation,  but  this  so  tore  me  that  I  could  no  longer  go  on 
falling  in  love  again,  naturally  and  sweetly.  No  man 
falls  in  love  if  he  has  just  been  flayed.  ...  I  could  no 

262 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

longer  think  of  Rachel  except  as  a  foil  to  Mary.  I  was 
moved  to  marry  her  by  a  new  set  of  motives ;  to  fling  her 
so  to  speak  in  Mary's  face,  and  from  the  fierce  vulgarity 
of  that  at  least  I  recoiled — and  let  her  go  as  I  have  told 
you. 


I  had  thought  all  that  was  over. 

I  remember  my  struggles  to  recover  my  peace. 

I  remember  how  very  late  one  night  I  went  up  to  the 
promenade  deck  to  smoke  a  cigar  before  turning  in. 
It  was  a  warm  moonlight  night.  The  broad  low  waves 
of  ebony  water  that  went  seething  past  below,  foamed 
luminous  and  were  streaked  and  starred  with  phos- 
phorescence. The  recumbent  moon,  past  its  full  and  sink- 
ing westward,  seemed  bigger  than  I  had  ever  seen  it  before, 
and  the  roundness  of  the  watery  globe  was  manifest  about 
the  edge  of  the  sky.  One  had  that  sense  so  rare  on  land, 
so  common  in  the  night  at  sea,  of  the  world  as  a  conceiv- 
able sphere,  and  of  interstellar  space  as  of  something  clear 
and  close  at  hand. 

There  came  back  to  me  again  that  feeling  I  had  lost  for 
a  time  in  Germany  of  being  not  myself  but  Man  con- 
sciously on  his  little  planet  communing  with  God. 

But  my  spirit  was  saying  all  the  time,  "  I  am  still  in  my 
pit,  in  my  pit.  After  all  I  am  still  in  my  pit." 

And  then  there  broke  the  answer  on  my  mind,  that  all 
our  lives  we  must  struggle  out  of  our  pits,  that  to  struggle 
out  of  our  pit  is  this  life,  there  is  no  individual  life  but 
that,  and  that  there  comes  no  escape  here,  no  end  to  that 
effort,  until  the  release  of  death.  Continually  or  fre- 

263 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

quently  we  may  taste  salvation,  but  never  may  we  achieve 
it  while  we  are  things  of  substance.  Each  moment  in 
our  lives  we  come  to  the  test  and  are  lost  again  or  saved 
again.  To  be  assured  of  one's  security  is  to  forget  and 
fall  away. 

And  standing  at  the  rail  with  these  thoughts  in  my  mind, 
suddenly  I  prayed.  .  .  . 

I  remember  how  the  engine-throbs  beat  through  me 
like  the  beating  of  a  heart,  and  that  far  below,  among  the 
dim  lights  that  came  up  from  the  emigrants  in  the  steer- 
age, there  was  a  tinkling  music  as  I  prayed  and  a  man's 
voice  singing  a  plaintive  air  in  some  strange  Slavonic 
tongue. 

That  voice  of  the  invisible  singer  and  the  spirit  of  the 
unknown  song-maker  and  the  serenity  of  the  sky,  they  were 
all,  I  perceived,  no  more  and  no  less  than  things  in  myself 
that  I  did  not  understand.  They  were  out  beyond  the 
range  of  understanding.  And  yet  they  fell  into  the 
completest  harmony  that  night  with  all  that  I  seemed 
to  understand.  .  .  . 

§8 

The  onset  of  New  York  was  extraordinarily  stimulat- 
ing to  me.  I  write  onset.  It  is  indeed  that.  New 
York  rides  up  out  of  the  waters,  a  cliff  of  man's  making; 
its  great  buildings  at  a  distance  seem  like  long  Chinese 
banners  held  up  against  the  sky.  From  Sandy  Hook 
to  the  great  landing  stages  and  the  swirling  hooting 
traffic  of  the  Hudson  River  there  fails  nothing  in  that 
magnificent  crescendo  of  approach. 

And  New  York  keeps  the  promise  of  its  first  appear- 
264 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

ance.  There  is  no  such  fulness  of  life  elsewhere  in  all 
the  world.  The  common  man  in  the  streets  is  a  bigger 
common  man  than  any  Old  World  city  can  show,  physic- 
ally bigger;  there  is  hope  in  his  eyes  and  a  braced  de- 
fiance. New  York  may  be  harsh  and  blusterous  and 
violent,  but  there  is  a  breeze  from  the  sea  and  a  breeze 
of  fraternity  in  the  streets,  and  the  Americans  of  all 
peoples  in  the  world  are  a  nation  of  still  unbroken  men. 

I  went  to  America  curious,  balancing  between  hope 
and  scepticism.  The  European  world  is  full  of  the 
criticism  of  America,  and  for  the  matter  of  that  America 
too  is  full  of  it;  hostility  and  depreciation  prevail, — over- 
much, for  in  spite  of  rawness  and  vehemence  and  a  scum 
of  blatant,  oh!  quite  asinine  folly,  the  United  States  of 
America  remains  the  greatest  country  in  the  world  and  the 
living  hope  of  mankind.  It  is  the  supreme  break  with  the 
old  tradition;  it  is  the  freshest  and  most  valiant  beginning 
that  has  ever  been  made  in  human  life. 

Here  was  the  antithesis  of  India;  here  were  no  peasants 
whatever,  no  traditional  culture,  no  castes,  no  established 
differences  (except  for  the  one  schism  of  color);  this 
amazing  place  had  never  had  a  famine,  never  a  plague; 
here  were  no  temples  and  no  priesthoods  dominating 
the  lives  of  the  people, — old  Trinity  church  embedded 
amidst  towering  sky-scrapers  was  a  symbol  for  as  much 
as  they  had  of  all  that;  and  here  too  there  was  no  crown, 
no  affectations  of  an  ancient  loyalty,  no  visible  army,  no 
traditions  of  hostility,  for  the  old  defiance  of  Britain  is  a 
thing  now  ridiculous  and  dead;  and  everyone  I  met  had 
an  air  as  if  he  knew  that  to-morrow  must  be  different  from 
to-day  and  different  and  novel  and  remarkable  by  virtue 
of  himself  and  such  as  himself. 

265 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

I  went  about  New  York,  with  the  incredulous  satis- 
faction of  a  man  who  has  long  doubted,  to  find  that  after 
all  America  was  coming  true.  The  very  clatter  pleased 
me,  the  crowds,  the  camp-like  slovenliness,  a  disorder  so 
entirely  different  from  the  established  and  accepted 
untidiness  of  China  or  India.  Here  was  something  the 
old  world  had  never  shown  me,  a  new  enterprise,  a  fresh 
vigor.  In  the  old  world  there  is  Change,  a  mighty  wave 
now  of  Change,  but  it  drives  men  before  it  as  if  it  were 
a  power  outside  them  and  not  in  them;  they  do  not  know, 
they  do  not  believe;  but  here  the  change  is  in  the  very 
blood  and  spirit  of  mankind.  They  breathe  it  in  even 
before  the  launch  has  brought  their  feet  to  Ellis  Island 
soil.  In  six  months  they  are  Americanized.  Does  it 
matter  that  a  thing  so  gigantic  should  be  a  little  coarse 
and  blundering  in  detail,  if  this  stumbling  giant  of  the  new 
time  breaks  a  gracious  relic  or  so  in  his  eager  clutch  and 
treads  a  little  on  the  flowers? 


§9. 

And  in  this  setting  of  energy  and  activity,  towering 
city  life  and  bracing  sea  breezes,  I  met  Gidding  again, 
whom  I  had  last  seen  departing  into  Egypt  to  look  more 
particularly  at  the  prehistoric  remains  and  the  temples 
of  the  first  and  second  dynasty  at  Abydos.  It  was  at  a 
dinner-party,  one  of  those  large  gatherings  that  welcome 
interesting  visitors.  It  wasn't,  of  course,  I  who  was  the 
centre  of  interest,  but  a  distinguished  French  portrait 
painter;  I  was  there  as  just  any,  guest.  I  hadn't  even 
perceived  Gidding  until  he  came  round  to  me  in  that 

266 


THE    NEW   WORLD 

precious  gap  of  masculine  intercourse  that  ensues  upon  the 
departure  of  the  ladies.  That  gap  is  one  of  the  rare  oppor- 
tunities for  conversation  men  get  in  America. 

"I  don't  know  whether  you  will  remember  me,"  he 
said,  "but  perhaps  you  remember  Crete — in  the  sun- 
rise." 

"And  no  end  of  talk  afterwards,"  I  said,  grasping  his 
hand,  "no  end — for  we  didn't  half  finish.  Did  you  have 
a  good  time  in  Egypt?" 

"I'm  not  going  to  talk  to  you  about  Egypt,"  said 
Gidding.  "I'm  through  with  ruins.  I'm  going  to  ask 
you — you  know  what  I'm  going  to  ask  you." 

"What  I  think  of  America.  It's  the  same  inevitable 
question.  I  think  everything  of  it.  It's  the  stepping- 
off  place.  I've  come  here  at  last,  because  it  matters 
most." 

"That's  what  we  all  want  to  believe,"  said  Gidding. 
"That's  what  we  want  you  to  tell  us." 

He  reflected.  "It's  immense,  isn't  it,  perfectly  im- 
mense? But I  am  afraid  at  times  we're  too  dis- 
posed to  forget  just  what  it's  all  about.  We've  got  to  be 
reminded.  That,  you  know,  is  why  we  keep  on  asking." 

He  went  on  to  question  me  where  I  had  been,  what 
I  had  done,  what  I  made  of  things.  He'd  never,  he  said, 
forgotten  our  two  days'  gossip  in  the  Levant,  and  all  the 
wide  questions  about  the  world  and  ourselves  that  we  had 
broached  then  and  left  so  open.  I  soon  found  myself 
talking  very  freely  to  him.  I  am  not  a  ready  or  abundant 
talker,  but  Gidding, has  the  knack  of  precipitating  my 
ideas.  He  is  America  to  my  Europe,  and  at  his  touch  all 
that  has  been  hanging  in  concentrated  solution  in  my 
mind  comes  crystallizing  out.  He  has  to  a  peculiar  de- 

267 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

gree  that  directness  and  simplicity  which  is  the  distinctive 
American  quality.  I  tried  to  explain  to  his  solemnly 
nodding  head  and  entirely  intelligent  eyes  just  exactly 
what  I  was  making  of  things,  of  the  world,  of  humanity,  of 
myself.  .  .  . 

It  was  an  odd  theme  for  two  men  to  attempt  after 
dinner,  servants  hovering  about  them,  their  two  faces  a 
little  flushed  by  wine  and  good  eating,  their  keen  interest 
masked  from  the  others  around  them  by  a  gossiping 
affectation,  their  hands  going  out  as  they  talked  for 
matches  or  cigarette,  and  before  we  had  gone  further  than 
to  fling  out  a  few  intimations  to  each  other  our  colloquy 
was  interrupted  by  our  host  standing  up  and  by  the 
general  stir  that  preluded  our  return  to  feminine  society. 
' '  We've  got  more  to  say  than  this, ' '  said  Gidding.  * '  We've 
got  to  talk."  He  brought  out  a  little  engagement  book 
that  at  once  drew  out  mine  in  response.  And  a  couple  of 
days  after,  we  spent  a  morning  and  afternoon  together 
and  got  down  to  some  very  intimate  conversation.  We 
motored  out  to  lunch  at  a  place  called  Nyack,  above  the 
Palisades,  we  crossed  on  a  ferry  to  reach  it,  and  we  visited 
the  house  of  Washington  Irving  near  Yonkers  on  our  way. 

I've  still  a  vivid  picture  in  my  mind  of  the  little  lawn 
at  Irvington  that  looks  out  upon  the  rushing  steel  of 
Hudson  River,  where  Gidding  opened  his  heart  to  me. 
I  can  see  him  now  as  he  leant  a  little  forward  over  the 
table,  with  his  wrists  resting  upon  it,  his  long  clean- 
shaven face  very  solemn  and  earnest  and  grey  against  the 
hard  American  sunlight  in  the  greenery  about  us,  while 
he  told  me  in  that  deliberate  American  voice  of  his  and 
with  the  deliberate  American  solemnity,  of  his  desire  to 
"do  some  decent  thing  with  life." 

268 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

He  was  very  anxious  to  set  himself  completely  before 
me,  I  remember,  on  that  occasion.  There  was  a  peculiar 
mental  kinship  between  us  that  even  the  profound  dif- 
ferences of  our  English  and  American  trainings  could 
not  mask.  And  now  he  told  me  almost  everything  ma- 
terial about  his  life.  For  the  first  time  I  learnt  how 
enormously  rich  he  was,  not  only  by  reason  of  his  father's 
acquisitions,  but  also  because  of  his  own  almost  instinctive 
aptitude  for  business.  "I've  got,"  he  said,  "to  begin 
with,  what  almost  all  men  spend  their  whole  lives  in  trying 
to  get.  And  it  amounts  to  nothing.  It  leaves  me  with 
life  like  a  blank  sheet  of  paper,  and  nothing  in  particular 
to  write  on  it." 

' '  You  know, ' '  he  said,  * '  it's — exasperating.  I'm  already 
half-way  to  three-score  and  ten,  and  I'm  still  wandering 
about  wondering  what  to  do  with  this  piece  of  life  God 
has  given  me.  ..." 

He  had  "lived"  as  people  say,  he  had  been  in  scrapes 
and  scandals,  tasted  to  the  full  the  bitter  intensities  of  the 
personal  life;  he  had  come  by  a  different  route  to  the  same 
conclusions  as  myself,  was  as  anxious  as  I  to  escape  from 
memories  and  associations  and  feuds  and  that  excessive 
vividness  of  individual  feeling  which  blinds  us  to  the 
common  humanity,  the  common  interest,  the  gentler, 
larger  reality,  which  lies  behind  each  tawdrily  emphatic 
self 

"It's  a  sort  of  inverted  homoeopathy  I  want,"  he  said. 
"The  big  thing  to  cure  the  little  thing " 

But  I  will  say  no  more  of  that  side  of  our  friendship, 
because  the  ideas  of  it  are  spread  all  through  this  book 

from  the  first  page  to  the  last What  concerns  me  now 

is  not  our  sympathy  and  agreement,  but  that  other  aspect 
18  269 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

of  our  relations  in  which  Gidding  becomes  impulse  and 
urgency.  "Seeing  we  have  these  ideas,"  said  he, — "and 
mind  you  there  must  be  others  who  have  them  or  are 
getting  to  them,  for  nobody  thinks  all  alone  in  this  world, 
— seeing  we  have  these  ideas  what  are  we  going  to  do? " 


§  10 

That  meeting  was  followed  by  another  before  I  left 
New  York,  and  presently  Gidding  joined  me  at  Denver, 
where  I  was  trying  to  measure  the  true  significance  of 
a  labor  paper  called  The  Appeal  to  Reason  that,  in  spite 
of  a  rigid  boycott  by  the  ordinary  agencies  for  news  dis- 
tribution went  out  in  the  middle  west  to  nearly  half  a 
million  subscribers,  and  was  filled  with  such  a  fierceness  of 
insurrection  against  labor  conditions,  such  a  hatred,  blind 
and  impassioned,  as  I  had  never  known  before.  Gidding 
remained  with  me  there  and  came  back  with  me  to  Chicago, 
where  I  wanted  to  see  something  of  the  Americanization 
of  the  immigrant,  and  my  survey  of  America,  the  social 
and  economic  problem  of  America,  resolved  itself  more  and 
more  into  a  conference  with  him. 

t       There  is  no  more  fruitless  thing  in  the  world  than  to 

I  speculate  how  life  would  have  gone  if  this  thing  or  that  had 

.^not  happened.     Yet  I  cannot  help  but  wonder  how  far 

I  might  have  travelled  along  the  lines  of  my  present  work 

%  if  I  had  gone  to  America  and  not  met  Gidding,  or  if  I  had 

met  him  without  visiting  America.     The  man  and  his 

country  are  inextricably  interwoven  in  my  mind.     Yet 

I  do  think  that  his  simplicity  and  directness,  his  force  of 

initiative  that  turned  me  from  a  mere  enquirer  into  an 

270 


THE    NEW   WORLD 

active  writer  and  organizer,  are  qualities  less  his  in  par- 
ticular than  America's  in  general.  There  is  in  America 
a  splendid  crudity,  a  directness  that  cleared  my  spirit  as  a 
bracing  wind  will  sweep  the  clouds  from  mountain  scenery. 
Compared  with  our  older  continents  America  is  mankind 
stripped  for  achievement.  So  many  things  are  not  there 
at  all,  need  not  be  considered;  no  institutional  aristocracy, 
no  Kaisers,  Czars,  nor  King-Emperors  to  maintain  a 
litigious  sequel  to  the  Empire  of  Rome;  it  has  no  unedu- 
cated immovable  peasantry  rooted  to  the  soil,  indeed  it 
has  no  rooting  to  the  soil  at  all;  it  is,  from  the  Forty- 
ninth  Parallel  to  the  tip  of  Cape  Horn,  one  triumphant 
embodiment  of  freedom  and  deliberate  agreement.  For 
I  mean  all  America,  Spanish-speaking  as  well  as  English- 
speaking;  they  have  this  detachment  from  tradition  in 
common.  See  how  the  United  States,  for  example,  stands 
flatly  on  that  bare  piece  of  eighteenth-century  intellec- 
tualism  the  Constitution,  and  is  by  virtue  of  that  a  struc- 
ture either  wilful  and  intellectual  or  absurd.  That  sense 
of  incurable  servitude  to  fate  and  past  traditions,  that 
encumbrance  with  ruins,  pledges,  laws  and  ancient  in- 
stitutions, that  perpetual  complication  of  considerations 
and  those  haunting  memories  of  preceding  human  fail- 
ures which  dwarf  the  courage  of  destiny  in  Europe  and 
Asia,  vanish  from  the  mind  within  a  week  of  one's  arrival 
in  the  New  World.  Naturally  one  begins  to  do  things. 
One  is  inspired  to  do  things.  One  feels  that  one  has  es- 
caped, one  feels  that  the  time  is  now.  All  America,  North 
and  South  alike,  is  one  tremendous  escape  from  ancient 
obsessions  into  activity  and  making. 

And  by  the  time  I  had  reached  America  I  had  already 
come  to  see  that  just  as  the  issues  of  party  politics  at  home 

271 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

and  international  politics  abroad  are  mere  superficialities 
above  the  greater  struggle  of  an  energetic  minority  to 
organize  and  exploit  the  labor  of  the  masses  of  mankind, 
so  that  struggle  also  is  only  a  huge  incident  in  the  still 
more  than  half  unconscious  impulse  to  replace  the  ancient 
way  of  human  living  by  a  more  highly  organized  world- 
wide social  order,  by  a  world  civilization  embodying  itself 
in  a  World  State.  And  I  saw  now  how  that  impulse  could 
neither  cease  nor  could  it  on  the  other  hand  realize  itself 
until  it  became  conscious  and  deliberate  and  merciful, 
free  from  haste  and  tyranny,  persuasive  and  sustained 
by  a  nearly  universal  sympathy  and  understanding.  For 
until  that  arrives  the  creative  forces  must  inevitably 
spend  themselves  very  largely  in  blind  alleys,  futile  rushes 
and  destructive  conflicts.  Upon  that  our  two  minds 
were  agreed. 

"We  have,"  said  Gidding,  "to  understand  and  make 
understanding.  That  is  the  real  work  for  us  to  do, 
Stratton,  that  is  our  job.  The  world,  as  you  say,  has 
been  floundering  about,  half  making  civilization  and  never 
achieving  it.  Now  we,  I  don't  mean  just  you  and  me, 
Stratton,  particularly,  but  every  intelligent  man  among 
us,  have  got  to  set  to  and  make  it  thorough.  There  is  no 
<  other  sane  policy  for  a  man  outside  his  private  passions 
but  that.  So  let's  get  at  it " 

I  find  it  now  impossible  to  trace  the  phases  by  which 
I  reached  these  broad  ideas  upon  which  I  rest  all  my  work, 
but  certainly  they  were  present  very  early  in  my  dis- 
cussions with  Gidding.  We  two  men  had  been  thinking 
independently  but  very  similarly,  and  it  is  hard  to  say 
just  what  completing  touches  either  of  us  gave  to  the 
other's  propositions.  We  found  ourselves  rather  than 

272 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

arrived  at  the  conception  of  ourselves  as  the  citizens 
neither  of  the  United  States  nor  of  England  but  of  a  state 
that  had  still  to  come  into  being,  a  World  State,  a  great 
unity  behind  and  embracing  the  ostensible  political 
fabrics  of  to-day — a  unity  to  be  reached  by  weakening 
antagonisms,  by  developing  understandings  and  tolera- 
tion, by  fostering  the  sense  of  brotherhood  across  the 
ancient  bounds. 

We  believed  and  we  believe  that  such  a  creative  con- 
ception of  a  human  commonweal  can  be  fostered  in  exactly 
the  same  way  that  the  idea  of  German  unity  was  fostered 
behind  the  dukedoms,  the  free  cities  and  kingdoms  of 
Germany,  a  conception  so  creative  that  it  can  dissolve 
traditional  hatreds,  incorporate  narrower  loyalties  and 
replace  a  thousand  suspicions  and  hostilities  by  a  common 
passion  for  collective  achievement,  so  creative  that  at 
last  the  national  boundaries  of  to-day  may  become  ob- 
stacles as  trivial  to  the  amplifying  good-will  of  men  as  the 
imaginary  line  that  severs  Normandy  from  Brittany,  or 
Berwick  from  Northumberland. 

i  And  it  is  not  only  a  great  peace  about  the  earth  that  this 
idea  of  a  World  State  means  for  us,  but  social  justice  also. 
We  are  both  convinced  altogether  that  there  survives  no 
reason  for  lives  of  toil,  for  hardship,  poverty,  famine,  in- 
fectious disease,  for  the  continuing  cruelties  of  wild  beasts 
and  the  greater  multitude  of  crimes,  but  mismanagement 
and  waste,  and  that  mismanagement  and  waste  spring 
from  no  other  source  than  ignorance  and  from  stupid 
divisions  and  jealousies,  base  patriotisms,  fanaticisms, 
prejudices  and  suspicions  that  are  all  no  more  than 
ignorance  a  little  mingled  with  viciousness.  We  have 
looked  closely  into  this  servitude  of  modern  labor,  we 

273 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

have  seen  its  injustice  fester  towards  syndicalism  and 
revolutionary  socialism,  and  we  know  these  things  for  the 
mere  aimless,  ignorant  resentments  they  are;  punishments, 
not  remedies.  We  have  looked  into  the  portentous 
threat  of  modern  war,  and  it  is  ignorant  vanity  and 
ignorant  suspicion,  the  bargaining  aggression  of  the 
British  prosperous  and  the  swaggering  vulgarity  of  the 
German  junker  that  make  and  sustain  that  monstrous 
European  devotion  to  arms.  And  we  are  convinced 
there  is  nothing  in  these  evils  and  conflicts  that  light  may 
not  dispel.  We  believe  that  these  things  can  be  dispelled, 
that  the  great  universals,  Science  which  has  limitations 
neither  of  race  nor  class,  Art  which  speaks  to  its  own  in 
every  rank  and  nation,  Philosophy  and  Literature  which 
broaden  sympathy  and  banish  prejudice,  can  flood  and 
submerge  and  will  yet  flow  over  and  submerge  every  one 
of  these  separations  between  man  and  man. 

I  will  not  say  that  this  Great  State,  this  World  Re- 
public of  civilized  men,  is  our  dream,  because  it  is  not  a 
dream,  it  is  a  manifestly  reasonable  possibility.  It  is  our 
intention.  It  is  what  we  are  deliberately  making  and  what 
in  a  little  while  very  many  men  and  women  will  be  making. 
We  are  secessionists  from  all  contemporary  nationalities 
\  and  loyalties.  We  have  set  ourselves  with  all  the  capacity 
I  and  energy  at  our  disposal  to  create  a  world-wide  common 
I  fund  of  ideas  and  knowledge,  and  to  evoke  a  world-wide 
Uense  of  human  solidarity  in  which  the  existing  limitations 
of  political  structure  must  inevitably  melt  away. 

It  was  Gidding  and  his  Americanism,  his  inborn  pre- 
disposition to  innovation  and  the  large  freedom  of  his 
wealth  that  turned  these  ideas  into  immediate  concrete 
undertakings.  I  see  more  and  more  that  it  is  here  that 

274 


THE    NEW   WORLD 

we  of  the  old  European  stocks,  who  still  grow  upon  the 
old  wood,  differ  most  from  those  vigorous  grafts  of  our 
race  in  America  and  Africa  and  Australia  on  the  one  hand 
and  from  the  renascent  peoples  of  the  East  on  the  other: 
that  we  have  lost  the  courage  of  youth  and  have  not  yet 
gained  the  courage  of  desperate  humiliations,  in  taking 
hold  of  things.  To  Gidding  it  was  neither  preposterous 
nor  insufferably  magnificent  that  we  should  set  about  a 
propaganda  of  all  science,  all  knowledge,  all  philosophical 
and  political  ideas,  round  about  the  habitable  globe.  His 
mind  began  producing  concrete  projects  as  a  fire-work 
being  lit  produces  sparks,  and  soon  he  was  " figuring  out" 
the  most  colossal  of  printing  and  publishing  projects,  as  a 
man  might  work  out  the  particulars  for  an  alteration  to 
his  bathroom.  It  was  so  entirely  natural  to  him,  it  was 
so  entirely  novel  to  me,  to  go  on  from  the  proposition  that 
understanding  was  the  primary  need  of  humanity  to  the 
systematic  organization  of  free  publishing,  exhaustive 
discussion,  intellectual  stimulation.  He  set  about  it  as  a 
company  of  pharmacists  might  organize  the  distribution 
of  some  beneficial  cure. 

"Say,  Stratton,"  he  said,  after  a  conversation  that 
had  seemed  to  me  half  fantasy;  "Let's  do  it." 

There  are  moments  still  when  it  seems  to  me  that  this 
life  of  mine  has  become  the  most  preposterous  of  adven- 
tures. We  two  absurd  human  beings  are  spending  our 
days  and  nights  in  a  sustained  and  growing  attempt  to 
do  what?  To  destroy  certain  obsessions  and  to  give  the 
universal  human  mind  a  form  and  a  desire  for  expression. 
We  have  put  into  the  shape  of  one  comprenhensive  project 
that  force  of  released  wealth  that  has  already  dotted 
America  with  universities,  libraries,  institutions  for  re- 

275 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

search  and  enquiry.  Already  there  are  others  at  work 
with  us,  and  presently  there  will  be  a  great  number.  We 
have  started  an  avalanche  above  the  old  politics  and  it 
gathers  mass  and  pace.  .  .  . 

And  there  never  was  an  impulse  towards  endeavor  in  a 
human  heart  that  wasn't  preposterous.  Man  is  a  pre- 
posterous animal.  Thereby  he  ceases  to  be  a  creature 
and  becomes  a  creator,  he  turns  upon  the  powers  that 
made  him  and  subdues  them  to  his  sendee ;  by  his  sheer 
impudence  he  establishes  his  claim  to  possess  a  soul.  .  .  . 

But  I  need  not  write  at  all  fully  of  my  work  here. 
This  book  is  not  about  that  but  about  my  coming  to  that. 
Long  before  this  manuscript  reaches  your  hands — if 
ultimately  I  decide  that  it  shall  reach  your  hands — you 
will  be  taking  your  share,  I  hope,  in  this  open  conspiracy 
against  potentates  and  prejudices  and  all  the  separating 
powers  of  darkness. 


§  ii 

I  would  if  I  could  omit  one  thing  that  I  must  tell  you 
here,  because  it  goes  so  close  to  the  very  core  of  all  this 
book  has  to  convey.  I  wish  I  could  leave  it  out  altogether. 
I  wish  I  could  simplify  my  story  by  smoothing  out  this 
wrinkle  at  least  and  obliterating  a  thing  that  was  at  once 
very  real  and  very  ugly.  You  see  I  had  at  last  struggled 
up  to  a  sustaining  idea,  to  a  conception  of  work  and  duty 
to  which  I  could  surely  give  my  life.  I  had  escaped  from 
my  pit  so  far.  And  it  was  natural  that  now  with  some- 
thing to  give  I  should  turn  not  merely  for  consolation  and 
service  but  for  help  and  fellowship  to  that  dear  human 
being  across  the  seas  who  had  offered  them  to  me  so 

276 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

straightly  and  sweetly.  All  that  is  brave  and  good  and 
as  you  would  have  me,  is  it  not?  Only,  dear  son,  that  is 
not  all  the  truth. 

There  was  still  in  my  mind,  for  long  it  remained  in 
my  mind,  a  bitterness  against  Mary.  I  had  left  her,  I 
had  lost  her,  we  had  parted;  but  from  Germany  to  America 
and  all  through  America  and  home  again  to  my  marriage 
and  with  me  after  my  marriage,  it  rankled  that  she  could 
still  go  on  living  a  life  independent  of  mine.  I  had  not 
yet  lost  my  desire  to  possess  her,  to  pervade  and  dominate 
her  existence;  my  resentment  that  though  she  loved  me 
she  had  first  not  married  me  and  afterwards  not  consented 
to  come  away  with  me  was  smouldering  under  the  closed 
hatches  of  my  mind.  And  so  while  the  better  part  of  me 
was  laying  hold  of  this  work  because  it  gave  me  the  hope 
of  a  complete  distraction  and  escape  from  my  narrow  and 
jealous  self,  that  lower  being  of  the  pit  was  also  rejoicing 
in  the  great  enterprises  before  me  and  in  the  marriage 
upon  which  I  had  now  determined,  because  it  was  a  last 
trampling  upon  my  devotion  to  Mary,  because  it  defied 
and  denied  some  lurking  claims  to  empire  I  could  suspect 
in  her.  I  want  to  tell  you  that  particularly  because  so  I 
am  made,  so  you  are  made,  so  most  of  us  are  made.  There 
is  scarcely  a  high  purpose  in  all  the  world  that  has  no 
dwarfish  footman  at  its  stirrup,  no  base  intention  over 
which  there  does  not  ride  at  least  the  phantom  of  an 
angel. 

Constantly  in  those  days,  it  seems  to  me  now,  I  was 
haunted  by  my  own  imagination  of  Mary  amiably  rec- 
onciled to  Justin,  bearing  him  children,  forgetful  of  or 
repudiating  all  the  sweetness,  all  the  wonder  and  beauty 
we  had  shared.  ...  It  was  an  unjust  and  ungenerous  con- 

277 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

ception,  I  knew  it  for  a  caricature  even  as  I  entertained  it, 
and  yet  it  tormented  me.  It  stung  me  like  a  spur.  It 
kept  me  at  work,  and  if  I  strayed  into  indolence  brought 
me  back  to  work  with  a  mind  galled  and  bleeding.  .  .  . 


§12 

And  I  suppose  it  is  mixed  up  with  all  this  that  I  could 
not  make  love  easily  and  naturally  to  Rachel.  I  could 
not  write  love-letters  to  her.  There  is  a  burlesque 
quality  in  these  scruples,  I  know,  seeing  that  I  was 
now  resolved  to  marry  her,  but  that  is  the  quality,  that 
is  the  mixed  texture  of  life.  We  overcome  the  greater 
things  and  are  conscience-stricken  by  the  details. 

I  wouldn't,  even  at  the  price  of  losing  her — and  I  was 
now  passionately  anxious  not  to  lose  her — use  a  single 
phrase  of  endearment  that  did  not  come  out  of  me  almost 
in  spite  of  myself.  At  any  rate  I  would  not  cheat  her. 
And  my  offer  of  marriage  when  at  last  I  sent  it  to  her  from 
Chicago  was,  as  I  remember  it,  almost  business-like.  I 
atoned  soon  enough  for  that  arid  letter  in  ten  thousand 
sweet  words  that  came  of  themselves  to  my  lips.  And  she 
paid  me  at  any  rate  in  my  own  coin  when  she  sent  me  her 
answer  by  cable,  the  one  word  "Yes." 

And  indeed  I  was  already  in  love  with  her  long  before 
I  wrote.  It  was  only  a  dread  of  giving  her  a  single  un- 
deserved cheapness  that  had  held  me  back  so  long.  It 
was  that  and  the  perplexity  that  Mary  still  gripped  my 
feelings;  my  old  love  for  her  was  there  in  my  heart  in  spite 
of  my  new  passion  for  Rachel,  it  was  blackened  perhaps 
and  ruined  and  changed  but  it  was  there.  It  was  as  if 

278 


THE   NEW   WORLD 

a  new  crater  burnt  now  in  the  ampler  circumference 
of  an  old  volcano,  which  showed  all  the  more  desolate 
and  sorrowful  and  obsolete  for  the  warm  light  of  the 
new  flames.  .  .  . 

How  impatiently  I  came  home!  Thoughts  of  England 
I  had  not  dared  to  think  for  three  long  years  might  now 
do  what  they  would  in  me.  I  dreamt  of  the  Surrey 
Hills  and  the  great  woods  of  Burnmore  Park,  of  the  chang- 
ing skies  and  stirring  soft  winds  of  our  grey  green  Mother- 
land. There  was  fog  in  the  Irish  Sea,  and  we  lost  the  better 
part  of  a  day  hooting  our  way  towards  Liverpool  while 
I  fretted  about  the  ship  with  all  my  luggage  packed, 
staring  at  the  grey  waters  that  weltered  under  the  mist. 
It  was  the  longest  day  in  my  life.  My  heart  was  full  of 
desire,  my  eyes  ached  for  the  little  fields  and  golden  October 
skies  of  England,  England  that  was  waiting  to  welcome 
me  back  from  my  exile  with  such  open  arms.  I  was 
coming  home, — home. 

I  hurried  through  London  into  Surrey  and  in  my 
father's  study,  warned  by  a  telegram,  I  found  a  bright- 
eyed,  resolute  young  woman  awaiting  me,  with  the  quality 
about  her  of  one  who  embarks  upon  a  long  premeditated 
adventure.  And  I  found  too  a  family  her  sisters  and  her 
brother  all  gladly  ready  for  me,  my  father  too  was  a  happy 
man,  and  on  the  eighth  of  November  in  1906  Rachel  and 
I  were  married  in  the  little  church  at  Shere.  We  stayed 
for  a  week  or  so  in  Hampshire  near  Ringwood,  the  season 
was  late  that  year  and  the  trees  still  very  beautiful;  and 
then  we  went  to  Portofino  on  the  Ligurian  coast. 

There  presently  Gidding  joined  us  and  we  began  to 
work  out  the  schemes  we  had  made  in  America,  the 
schemes  that  now  fill  my  life. 

279 


CHAPTER  THE   TENTH 
MARY  WRITES 

§i 

IT  was  in  the  early  spring  of  1909  that  I  had  a  letter 
from  Mary. 

By  that  time  my  life  was  set  fully  upon  its  present 
courses,  Gidding  and  I  had  passed  from  the  stage  of 
talking  and  scheming  to  definite  undertakings.  Indeed 
by  1909  things  were  already  organized  upon  their  present 
lines.  We  had  developed  a  huge  publishing  establish- 
ment with  one  big  printing  plant  in  Barcelona  and  another 
in  Manchester,  and  we  were  studying  the  peculiar  difficul- 
ties that  might  attend  the  establishment  of  a  third  plant 
in  America.  Our  company  was  an  English  company 
under  the  name  of  Alphabet  and  Mollentrave,  and  we 
were  rapidly  making  it  the  broadest  and  steadiest  flow 
of  publication  the  world  had  ever  seen.  Its  streams  al- 
ready reached  further  and  carried  more  than  any  single 
firm  had  ever  managed  to  do  before.  We  were  reprinting, 
in  as  carefully  edited  and  revised  editions  as  we  could,  the 
whole  of  the  English,  Spanish  and  French  literature,  and 
we  were  only  waiting  for  the  release  of  machinery  to 
attack  German,  Russian  and  Italian,  and  were  giving 
each  language  not  only  its  own  but  a  very  complete  series 

280 


MARY   WRITES 

of  good  translations  of  the  classical  writers  in  every  other 
tongue.  We  had  a  little  band  of  editors  and  translators 
permanently  in  our  service  at  each  important  literary 
centre.  We  had,  for  example,  more  than  a  score  of  men 
at  work  translating  Bengali  fiction  and  verse  into  English, 
— a  lot  of  that  new  literature  is  wonderfully  illuminating 
to  an  intelligent  Englishman — and  we  had  a  couple  of  men 
hunting  about  for  new  work  in  Arabic.  We  meant  to  give 
so  good  and  cheap  a  book,  and  to  be  so  comprehensive 
in  our  choice  of  books,  excluding  nothing  if  only  it  was 
real  and  living,  on  account  of  any  inferiority  of  quality, 
obscurity  of  subject  or  narrowness  of  demand,  that  in  the 
long  run  anybody,  anywhere,  desiring  to  read  anything 
would  turn  naturally  and  inevitably  to  our  lists. 

Ours  was  to  be  in  the  first  place  a  world  literature. 
Then  afterwards  upon  its  broad  currents  of  distribution 
and  in  the  same  forms  we  meant  to  publish  new  work 
and  new  thought.  We  were  also  planning  an  encyclo- 
paedia. Behind  our  enterprise  of  translations  and  re- 
prints we  were  getting  together  and  putting  out  a  series 
of  guide-books,  gazetteers,  dictionaries,  text-books  and 
books  of  reference,  and  we  were  organizing  a  revising  staff 
for  these,  a  staff  that  should  be  constantly  keeping  them 
up  to  date.  It  was  our  intention  to  make  every  copy 
we  printed  bear  the  date  of  its  last  revision  in  a  con- 
spicuous place,  and  we  hoped  to  get  the  whole  line  of 
these  books  ultimately  upon  an  annual  basis,  and  to  sell 
them  upon  repurchasing  terms  that  would  enable  us  to 
issue  a  new  copy  and  take  back  and  send  the  old  one  to 
the  pulping  mill  at  a  narrow  margin  of  profit.  Then  we 
meant  to  spread  our  arms  wider,  and  consolidate  and 
offer  our  whole  line  of  text-books,  guide-books  and  gazet- 

281 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

teers,  bibliographies,  atlases,  dictionaries  and  directories 
as  a  new  World  Encyclopaedia,  that  should  also  annually 
or  at  longest  biennially  renew  its  youth. 

So  far  we  had  gone  in  the  creation  of  a  huge  interna- 
tional organ  of  information,  and  of  a  kind  of  gigantic 
modern  Bible  of  world  literature,  and  in  the  process  of 
its  distribution  we  were  rapidly  acquiring  an  immense 
detailed  knowledge  of  the  book  and  publishing  trade, 
finding  congestions  here,  neglected  opportunities  there, 
and  devising  and  drawing  up  a  hundred  schemes  for 
relief,  assistance,  amalgamation  and  rearrangement.  We 
had  branches  in  China,  Japan,  Peru,  Iceland  and  a  thou- 
sand remote  places  that  would  have  sounded  as  far  off 
as  the  moon  to  an  English  or  American  bookseller  in  the 
seventies.  China  in  particular  was  a  growing  market. 
We  had  a  subsidiary  company  running  a  flourishing  line 
of  book  shops  in  the  east-end  of  London,  and  others  in 
New  Jersey,  Chicago,  Buenos  Ayres,  the  South  of  France, 
and  Ireland.  Incidentally  we  had  bought  up  some 
thousands  of  miles  of  Labrador  forest  to  ensure  our  paper 
supply,  and  we  could  believe  that  before  we  died  there 
would  not  be  a  corner  of  the  world  in  which  any  book  of 
interest  or  value  whatever  would  not  be  easily  attainable 
by  any  intelligent  person  who  wanted  to  read  it.  And 
already  we  were  taking  up  the  more  difficult  and  ambi- 
tious phase  of  our  self-appointed  task,  and  considering 
the  problem  of  using  these  channels  we  were  mastering 
and  deepening  and  supplementing  for  the  stimulation 
and  wide  diffusion  of  contemporary  thought. 

There  we  went  outside  the  province  of  Alphabet  and 
Mollentrave  and  into  an  infinitely  subtler  system  of 
interests.  We  wanted  to  give  sincere  and  clear-thinking 

282 


MARY   WRITES 

writers  encouragement  and  opportunity,  to  improve  the 
critical  tribunal  and  make  it  independent  of  advertising 
interests,  so  that  there  would  be  a  readier  welcome  for 
luminous  thinking  and  writing  and  a  quicker  explosion 
of  intellectual  imposture.  We  sought  to  provide  guides 
and  intelligencers  to  contemporary  thought.  We  had 
already  set  up  or  subsidized  or  otherwise  aided  a  certain 
number  of  magazines  and  periodicals  that  seemed  to  us 
independent-spirited,  out-spoken  and  well  handled,  but 
we  had  still  to  devise  our  present  scheme  of  financing 
groups  of  men  to  create  magazines  and  newspapers,  which 
became  their  own  separate  but  inalienable  property  after 
so  many  years  of  success. 

But  all  this  I  hope  you  will  already  have  become  more 
or  less  familiar  with  when  this  story  reaches  your  hands, 
and  I  hope  by  the  time  it  does  so  we  shall  be  far  beyond 
our  present  stage  of  experiment  and  that  you  will  have 
come  naturally  to  play  your  part  in  this  most  fascinating 
business  of  maintaining  an  onward  intellectual  move- 
ment in  the  world,  a  movement  not  simply  independent 
of  but  often  running  counter  to  all  sorts  of  political  and 
financial  interests.  I  tell  you  this  much  here  for  you  to 
understand  that  already  in  1909  and  considering  the  busi- 
ness side  of  my  activities  alone,  I  was  a  hard  worker  and 
very  strenuously  employed.  And  in  addition  to  all  this 
huge  network  of  enterprises  I  had  developed  with  Gidding, 
I  was  still  pretty  actively  a  student.  I  wasn't — I  never 
shall  be — absolutely  satisfied  with  my  general  ideas.  I 
was  enquiring  keenly  and  closely  into  those  problems  of 
group  and  crowd  psychology  from  which  all  this  big 
publishing  work  has  arisen,  and  giving  particular  atten- 
tion to  the  war-panics  and  outbreaks  of  international 

283 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

hostility  that  were  then  passing  in  deepening  waves  across 
Europe.  I  had  already  accumulated  a  mass  of  notes  for 
the  book  upon  "  Group  Jealousy  in  Religious  Persecution, 
Racial  Conflicts  and  War"  which  I  hope  to  publish  the 
year  after  next,  and  which  therefore  I  hope  you  will  have 
read  long  before  this  present  book  can  possibly  come  to 
you.  And  moreover  Rachel  and  I  had  established  our 
home  in  London — in  the  house  we  now  occupy  during 
the  winter  and  spring — and  both  you  and  your  little  sister 
had  begun  your  careers  as  inhabitants  of  this  earth. 
Your  little  sister  had  indeed  but  just  begun. 

And  then  one  morning  at  the  breakfast-table  I  picked 
a  square  envelope  out  of  a  heap  of  letters,  and  saw  the 
half -forgotten  and  infinitely  familiar  handwriting  of  Lady 
Mary  Justin.  .  .  .  The  sight  of  it  gave  me  an  odd  mixture 
of  sensations.  I  was  startled,  I  was  disturbed,  I  was  a 
little  afraid.  I  hadn't  forgiven  her  yet;  it  needed  but  this 
touch  to  tell  me  how  little  I  had  forgotten.  .  .  . 


§2 

I  sat  with  it  in  my  hand  for  a  moment  or  so  before  I 
opened  it,  hesitating  as  one  hesitates  before  a  door  that 
may  reveal  a  dramatic  situation.  Then  I  pushed  my 
chair  a  little  back  from  the  table  and  ripped  the  en- 
velope. 

It  was  a  far  longer  letter  than  Mary  had  ever  written 
me  in  the  old  days,  and  in  a  handwriting  as  fine  as  ever 
but  now  rather  smaller.  I  have  it  still,  and  here  I  open 
its  worn  folds  and,  except  for  a  few  trifling  omissions, 
copy  it  out  for  you.  ...  A  few  trifling  omissions,  I  say, — 

284 


MARY   WRITES 

just  one  there  is  that  is  not  trifling,  but  that  I  must  needs 
make.  .  .  . 

You  will  never  see  any  of  these  letters  because  I  shall 
destroy  them  so  soon  as  this  copy  is  made.  It  has  been 
difficult— or  I  should  have  destroyed  them  before.  But 
some  things  can  be  too  hard  for  us.  ... 

This  first  letter  is  on  the  Martens  note-paper;  its  very 
heading  was  familiar  to  me.  The  handwriting  of  the 
earlier  sentences  is  a  little  stiff  and  disjointed,  and  there 
are  one  or  two  scribbled  obliterations;  it  is  like  someone 
embarrassed  in  speaking ;  and  then  it  passes  into  her  usual 
and  characteristic  ease.  .  .  . 

And  as  I  read,  slowly  my  long-cherished  anger  evapo- 
rated, and  the  real  Mary,  outspoken  and  simple,  whom  I 
had  obscured  by  a  cloud  of  fancied  infidelities,  returned 
to  me.  .  .  . 

"My  dear  Stephen,"  she  begins,  "About  six  weeks 
ago  I  saw  in  the  Times  that  you  have  a  little  daughter. 
It  set  me  thinking,  picturing  you  with  a  mite  of  a  baby 
in  your  arms — what  little  things  they  are,  Stephen! — 
and  your  old  face  bent  over  it,  so  that  presently  I  went 
to  my  room  and  cried.  It  set  me  thinking  about  you  so 
that  I  have  at  last  written  you  this  Better.  ...  I  love  to 
think  of  you  with  wife  and  children  about  you  Stephen, — 
I  heard  of  your  son  for  the  first  time  about  a  year  ago, 
but — don't  mistake  me, — something  wrings  me  too.  .  .  . 

"Well,  I  too  have  children.  Have  you  ever  thought 
of  me  as  a  mother?  I  am.  I  wonder  how  much  you 
know  about  me  now.  I  have  two  children  and  the  young- 
est is  just  two  years  old.  And  somehow  it  seems  to  me 
that  now  that  you  and  I  have  both  given  such  earnests 
of  our  good  behavior,  such  evidence  that  that  side  of  life 
19  285 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

anyhow  is  effectually  settled  for  us,  there  is  no  reason 
remaining  why  we  shouldn't  correspond.  You  are  my 
brother,  Stephen,  and  my  friend  and  my  twin  and  the  core 
of  my  imagination,  fifty  babies  cannot  alter  that,  we  can 
live  but  once  and  then  die,  and,  promise  or  no  promise, 
I  will  not  be  dead  any  longer  in  your  world  when  I'm  not 
dead,  nor  will  I  have  you,  if  I  can  help  it,  a  cold  unanswer- 
ing  corpse  in  mine.  .  .  . 

"Too  much  of  my  life  and  being,  Stephen,  has  been 
buried,  and  I  am  in  rebellion.  This  is  a  breach  of  the 
tomb  if  you  like,  an  irregular  private  premature  resur- 
rection from  an  interment  in  error.  Out  of  my  alleged 
grave  I  poke  my  head  and  say  Hello!  to  you.  Stephen, 
old  friend!  dear  friend!  how  are  you  getting  on?  What 
is  it  like  to  you?.  How  do  you  feel?  I  want  to  know 
about  you.  —  I'm  not  doing  this  at  all  furtively,  and  you 
can  write  back  to  me,  Stephen,  as  openly  as  your  heart 
desires.  I  have  told  Justin  I  should  do  this.  I  rise,  you 
see,  blowing  my  own  Trump.  Let  the  other  graves  do 
as  they  please.  .  .  . 

"Your  letters  will  be  respected,  Stephen.  ...  If  you- 
choose  to  rise  also  and  write  me  a  letter. 

"Stephen,  I've  been  wanting  to  do  this  for — for  all 
the  time.  If  there  was  thought-reading  you  would  have 
had  a  thousand  letters.  But  formerly  I  was  content  to 
submit,  and  latterly  I've  chafed  more.  I  think  that  as 
what  they  call  passion  has  faded,  the  immense  friend- 
liness has  become  more  evident,  and  made  the  bar  less 
and  less  justifiable.  You  and  I  have  had  so  much  between 
us  beyond  what  somebody  the  other  day— it  was  in  a  re- 
port in  the  Times,  I  think — was  calling  Materia  Matri- 
monidla.  And  of  course  I  hear  about  you  from  all  sorts 

286 


MARY  WRITES 

of  people,  and  in  all  sorts  of  ways — whatever  you  have 
done  about  me  I've  had  a  woman's  sense  of  honor  about 
you  and  I've  managed  to  learn  a  great  deal  without  asking 
forbidden  questions.  I've  pricked  up  my  ears  at  the 
faintest  echo  of  your  name. 

4 'They  say  you  have  become  a  publisher  with  an 
American  partner,  a  sort  of  Harmsworth  and  Nelson 
and  Times  Book  Club  and  Hooper  and  Jackson  all  rolled 
into  one.  That  seems  so  extraordinary  to  me  that  for 
that  alone  I  should  have  had  to  write  to  you.  I  want  to 
know  the  truth  of  that.  I  never  see  any  advertisement  of 
Stratton  &  Co.  or  get  any  inkling  of  what  it  is  you  publish. 
Are  you  the  power  behind  the  respectable  Murgatroyd 
and  the  honest  Mil  vain?  I  know  them  both  and  neither 
has  the  slightest  appearance  of  being  animated  by  you. 
And  equally  perplexing  is  your  being  mixed  up  with  an 
American  like  that  man  Gidding  in  Peace  Conferences 
and  Social  Reform  Congresses  and  so  forth.  It's  so — 
Carnegieish.  There  I'm  surer  because  I've  seen  your 
name  in  reports  of  meetings  and  I've  read  your  last  two 
papers  in  the  Fortnightly.  I  can't  imagine  you  of  all 
people,  with  your  touch  of  reserve,  launching  into  move- 
ments and  rubbing  shoulders  with  faddists.  What  does 
it  mean,  Stephen?  I  had  expected  to  find  you  coming 
back  into  English  politics — speaking  and  writing  on  the 
lines  of  your  old  beginning,  taking  up  that  work  you 
dropped — it's  six  years  now  ago.  I've  been  accumulating 
disappointment  for  two  years.  Mr.  Arthur,  you  see,  on 
our  side," — this  you  will  remember  was  in  1909 — "still 
steers  our  devious  party  courses,  and  the  Tariff  Reformers 
have  still  to  capture  us.  Weston  Massinghay  was  com- 
paring them  the  other  night,  at  a  dinner  at  the  dynes', 

287 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

to  a  crowded  piratical  galley  trying  to  get  alongside  a 
good  seaman  in  rough  weather.  He  was  very  funny  about 
Leo  Maxse  in  the  poop,  white  and  shrieking  with  passion 
and  the  motion,  and  all  the  capitalists  armed  to  the  teeth 
and  hiding  snug  in  the  hold  until  the  grappling-irons  were 
fixed.  .  .  .  Why  haven't  you  come  into  the  game?  I'd 
hoped  it  if  only  for  the  sake  of  meeting  you  again.  What 
are  you  doing  out  beyond  there? 

"We  are  in  it  so  far  as  I  can  contrive.  But  I  con- 
trive very  little.  We  are  pillars  of  the  Conservative 
party — on  that  Justin's  mind  is  firmly  settled — and  every 
now  and  then  I  clamor  urgently  that  we  must  do  more 
for  it.  But  Justin's  ideas  go  no  further  than  writing 
cheques — doing  more  for  the  party  means  writing  a  bigger 
cheque — and  there  are  moments  when  I  feel  we  shall 
simply  bring  down  a  peerage  upon  our  heads  and  bury 
my  ancient  courtesy  title  under  the  ignominy  of  a  new 
creation.  He  would  certainly  accept  it.  He  writes  his 
cheque  and  turns  back  at  the  earliest  opportunity  to  his 
miniature  gardens  and  the  odd  little  freaks  of  collecting 
that  attract  him.  Have  you  ever  heard  of  chintz  oil 
jars?  ' No,'  you  will  say.  Nor  has  anyone  else  yet  except 
our  immediate  circle  of  friends  and  a  few  dealers  who  are 
no  doubt  industriously  increasing  the  present  scanty 
supply.  We  possess  three.  They  are  matronly  shaped 
jars  about  two  feet  or  a  yard  high,  of  a  kind  of  terra-cotta 
with  wooden  tops  surmounted  by  gilt  acorns,  and  they 
have  been  covered  with  white  paint  and  on  this  flowers 
and  birds  and  figures  from  some  very  rich  old  chintz 
have  been  stuck  very  cunningly,  and  then  everything  has 
been  varnished — and  there  you  are.  Our  first  and  best 
was  bought  for  seven-and-sixpence,  brought  home  in  the 

288 


MARY   WRITES 

car,  put  upon  a  console  table  on  the  second  landing  and 
worshipped.  It's  really  a  very  pleasant  mellow  thing  to 
see.  Nobody  had  ever  seen  the  like.  Guests,  syco- 
phantic people  of  all  sorts  were  taken  to  consider  it. 
It  was  looked  at  with  heads  at  every  angle,  one  man 
even  kept  his  head  erect  and  one  went  a  little  upstairs 
and  looked  at  it  under  his  arm.  Also  the  most  powerful 
lenses  have  been  used  for  a  minute  examination,  and 
one  expert  licked  the  varnish  and  looked  extremely 
thoughtful  and  wise  at  me  as  he  turned  the  booty  over 
his  gifted  tongue.  And  now,  God  being  with  us,  we 
mean  to  possess  every  specimen  in  existence — before 
the  Americans  get  hold  of  the  idea.  Yesterday  Justin 
got  up  and  motored  sixty  miles  to  look  at  an  alleged 
fourth.  .  .  . 

"Oh  my  dear!  I  am  writing  chatter.  You  perceive 
I've  reached  the  chattering  stage.  It  is  the  fated  end 
of  the  clever  woman  in  a  good  social  position  nowadays, 
her  mind  beats  against  her  conditions  for  the  last  time 
and  breaks  up  into  this  carping  talk,  this  spume  of 
observation  and  comment,  this  anecdotal  natural  history 
of  the  restraining  husband,  as  waves  burst  out  their 
hearts  in  a  foam*  upon  a  reef.  But  it  isn't  chatter  I  want 
to  write  to  you. 

"  Stephen,  I'm  intolerably  wretched.  No  creature 
has  ever  been  gladder  to  have  been  born  than  I  was  for 
the  first  five  and  twenty  years  of  my  life.  I  was  full  of 
hope  and  I  was  full,  I  suppose,  of  vanity  and  rash  con- 
fidence. I  thought  I  was  walking  on  solid  earth  with 
my  head  reaching  up  to  the  clouds,  and  that  sea  and  sky 
and  all  mankind  were  mine  for  the  smiling.  And  I  am 
nothing  and  worse  than  nothing,  I  am  the  ineffectual 

289 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

mother  of  two  children,  a  daughter  whom  I  adore — but 
of  her  I  may  not  tell  you — and  a  son, — a  son  who  is  too 
like  his  father  for  any  fury  of  worship,  a  stolid  little  crea- 
ture. .  .  .  That  is  all  I  have  done  in  the  world,  a  mere 
blink  of  maternity,  and  my  blue  Persian  who  is  scarcely 
two  years  old,  has  already  had  nine  kittens.  My  husband 
and  I  have  never  forgiven  each  other  the  indefinable 
wrong  of  not  pleasing  each  other;  that  embitters  more 
and  more;  to  take  it  out  of  each  other  is  our  r61e;  I  have 
done  my  duty  to  the  great  new  line  of  Justin  by  giving 
it  the  heir  it  needed,  and  now  a  polite  and  silent  separa- 
tion has  fallen  between  us.  We  hardly  speak  except  in 
company.  I  have  not  been  so  much  married,  Stephen, 
\  I  find,  as  collected,  and  since  our  tragic  misadventure — 
but  there  were  beautiful  moments,  Stephen,  unforget- 
table glimpses  of  beauty  in  that  —  thank  God,  I  say 
impenitently  for  that — the  door  of  the  expensively  splen- 
did cabinet  that  contains  me,  when  it  is  not  locked,  is 
very  discreetly — watched.  I  have  no  men  friends,  no 
social  force,  no  freedom  to  take  my  line.  My  husband  is 
my  official  obstacle.  \  We  barb  the  limitations  of  life  for 
one  another.  A  little  while  ago  he  sought  to  chasten  me — 
to  rouse  me  rather — through  jealousy,  and  made  me  aware 
indirectly  but  a  little  defiantly  of  a  young  person  of  ar- 
tistic gifts  in  whose  dramatic  career  he  was  pretending 
a  conspicuous  interest.  I  was  jealous  and  roused,  but 
scarcely  in  the  way  he  desired.  'This,'  I  said  quite 
cheerfully,  'means  freedom  for  me,  Justin/ — and  the 
young  woman  vanished  from  the  visible  universe  with 
an  incredible  celerity.  I  hope  she  was  properly  paid  off 
and  not  simply  made  away  with  by  a  minion,  but  I  be- 
come more  and  more  aware  of  my  ignorance  of  a  great 

290 


MARY   WRITES 

financier's  methods  as  I  become  more  and  more  aware  of 
them.  .  .  . 

"  Stephen,  my  dear,  my  brother,  I  am  intolerably  un- 
happy. I  do  not  know  what  to  do  with  myself,  or  what 
there  is  to  hope  for  in  life.  I  am  like  a  prisoner  in  a  magic 
cage  and  I  do  not  know  the  word  that  will  release  me. 
How  is  it  with  you?  Are  you  unhappy  beyond  measure 
or  are  you  not;  and  if  you  are  not,  what  are  you  doing 
with  life?  Have  you  found  any  secret  that  makes  living 
tolerable  and  understandable?  Write  to  me,  write  to  me 
at  least  and  tell  me  that.  .  .  .  Please  write  to  me. 

"Do  you  remember  how  long  ago  you  and  I  sat  in 
the  old  Park  at  Burnmore,  and  how  I  kept  pestering 
you  and  asking  you  what  is  all  this  for?  And  you  looked 
at  the  question  as  an  obstinate  mule  looks  at  a  narrow 
bridge  he  could  cross  but  doesn't  want  to.  Well,  Stephen, 
you've  had  nearly — how  many  years  is  it  now? — to  get 
an  answer  ready.  What  is  it  all  for?  What  do  you  make 
of  it?  Never  mind  my  particular  case,  or  the  case  of 
Women  with  a  capital  W,  tell  me  your  solution.  You  are 
active,  you  keep  doing  things,  you  find  life  worth  living. 
Is  publishing  a  way  of  peace  for  the  heart  ?  I  am  prepared 
to  believe  even  that.  But  justify  yourself.  Tell  me  what 
you  have  got  there  to  keep  your  soul  alive." 


I  read  this  letter  to  the  end  and  looked  up,  and  there 
was  my  home  about  me,  a  room  ruddy-brown  and  familiar, 
with  the  row  of  old  pewter  things  upon  the  dresser,  the 
steel  engravings  of  former  Strattons  that  came  to  me 

291 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

from  my  father,  a  convex  mirror  exaggerating  my  upturned 
face.  And  Rachel  just  risen  again  sat  at  the  other  end 
of  the  table,  a  young  mother,  fragile  and  tender-eyed. 
The  clash  of  these  two  systems  of  reality  was  amazing. 
It  was  as  though  I  had  not  been  parted  from  Mary  for  a 
day,  as  though  all  that  separation  and  all  that  cloud  of 
bitter  jealousy  had  been  a  mere  silence  between  two  people 
in  the  same  room.  Indeed  it  was  extraordinarily  like 
that,  as  if  I  had  been  sitting  at  a  desk,  imagining  myself 
alone,  reading  my  present  life  as  one  reads  in  a  book  at 
a  shaded  lamp,  and  then  suddenly  that  silent  other  had 
spoken. 

And  then  I  looked  at  the  page  of  my  life  before  me 
and  became  again  a  character  in  the  story. 

I  met  the  enquiry  in  Rachel's  eyes.  "It's  a  letter 
from  Mary  Justin,"  I  said. 

She  did  not  answer  for  a  few  moments.  She  became 
interested  in  the  flame  of  the  little  spirit  lamp  that  kept 
her  coffee  hot.  She  finished  what  she  had  to  do  with 
that  and  then  remarked,  "I  thought  you  two  were  not  to 
correspond." 

"Yes,"  I  said,  putting  the  letter  down;  "that  was  the 
understanding. ' ' 

There  was  a  little  interval  of  silence,  and  then  I  got  up 
and  went  to  the  fireplace  where  the  bacon  and  sausages 
stood  upon  a  trivet. 

"I  suppose,"  said  Rachel,  "she  wants  to  hear  from  you 
again." 

"She  thinks  that  now  we  have  children,  and  that  she 
has  two,  we  can  consider  what  was  past,  past  and  closed 
and  done  with,  and  she  wants  to  hear — about  me.  .  .  . 
Apart  from  everything  else — we  were  very  great  friends," 

292 


MARY   WRITES 

"Of  course,"  said  Rachel  with  lips  a  little  awry,  "of 
course.  You  must  have  been  great  friends.  And  it's 
natural  for  her  to  write. " 

"I  suppose,"  she  added,  "her  husband  knows." 

"She's  told  him,  she  says.  ..." 

Her  eye  fell  on  the  letter  in  my  hand  for  the  smallest 
fraction  of  a  second,  and  it  was  as  if  hastily  she  snatched 
away  a  thought  from  my  observation.  I  had  a  moment 
of  illuminating  embarrassment.  So  far  we  had  contrived 
to  do  as  most  young  people  do  when  they  marry,  we  had 
sought  to  make  our  lives  unreservedly  open  to  one  another, 
we  had  affected  an  entire  absence  of  concealments  about 
our  movements,  our  thoughts.  If  perhaps  I  had  been 
largely  silent  to  her  about  Mary  it  was  not  so  much 
that  I  sought  to  hide  things  from  her  as  that  I  myself 
sought  to  forget.  It  is  one  of  the  things  that  we  learn 
too  late,  the  impossibility  of  any  such  rapid  and  wilful 
coalescences  of  souls.  But  we  had  maintained  a  conven- 
tion of  infinite  communism  since  our  marriage;  we  had 
shown  each  other  our  letters  as  a  matter  of  course,  shared 
the  secrets  of  our  friends,  gone  everywhere  together  as  far 
as  we  possibly  could. 

I  wanted  now  to  give  her  the  letter  in  my  hand  to  read 
— and  to  do  so  was  manifestly  impossible.  Something 
had  arisen  between  us  that  made  out  of  our  unity  two 
abruptly  separated  figures  masked  and  veiled.  Here 
were  things  I  knew  and  understood  completely  and  that 
I  could  not  even  describe  to  Rachel.  What  would  she 
make  of  Mary's  "Write  to  me.  Write  to  me"?  A  mere 
wish  to  resume. ...  I  would  not  risk  the  exposure  of  Mary's 
mind  and  heart  and  unhappiness,  to  her  possible  mis- 
interpretation. .  .  . 

293 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

That  letter  fell  indeed  like  a  pitiless  searchlight  into 
all  that  region  of  differences  ignored,  over  which  we  had 
built  the  vaulted  convention  of  our  complete  mutual 
understanding.  In  my  memory  it  seems  to  me  now  as 
though  we  hung  silent  for  quite  a  long  time  over  the 
evasions  that  were  there  so  abruptly  revealed. 

Then  I  put  the  letter  into  my  pocket  with  a  clumsy 
assumption  of  carelessness,  and  knelt  down  to  the  fender 
and  sausages. 

"It  will  be  curious,"  I  said,  "to  write  to  her  again.  .  .  . 
To  tell  her  about  things.  .  .  ." 

And  then  with  immense  interest,  "Are  these  Chichester 
sausages  you've  got  here,  Rachel,  or  some  new  kind?" 

Rachel  roused  herself  to  respond  with  an  equal  affecta- 
tion, and  we  made  an  eager  conversation  about  bacon  and 
sausages — for  after  that  startling  gleam  of  divergence  we 
were  both  anxious  to  get  back  to  the  superficialities  of 
life  again. 

§4 

I  did  not  answer  Mary's  letter  for  seven  or  eight 
days. 

During  that  period  my  mind  was  full  of  her  to  the 
exclusion  of  every  other  interest.  I  re-read  all  that  she 
had  to  say  many  times,  and  with  each  reading  the  effect 
of  her  personality  deepened.  It  was  all  so  intensely 
familiar,  the  flashes  of  insight,  the  blazing  frankness, 
the  quick  turns  of  thought,  and  her  absurd  confidence 
in  a  sort  of  sane  stupidity  that  she  had  always  insisted 
upon  my  possessing.  And  her  unembarrassed  affection- 
ateness.  Her  quick  irregular  writing  seemed  to  bring 

294 


MARY   WRITES 

back  with  it  the  changing  light  in  her  eyes,  the  intonations 
of  her  voice,  something  of  her  gesture.  .  .  . 

I  didn't  go  on  discussing  with  myself  whether  we  two 
ought  to  correspond;  that  problem  disappeared  from  my 
thoughts.  Her  challenge  to  me  to  justify  myself  took 
possession  of  my  mind.  That  thrust  towards  self- 
examination  was  the  very  essence  of  her  ancient  influence. 
How  did  I  justify  myself?  I  was  under  a  peculiar  com- 
pulsion to  answer  that  to  her  satisfaction.  She  had 
picked  me  up  out  of  my  work  and  accumulating  routines 
with  that  demand,  made  me  look  at  myself  and  my  world 
again  as  a  whole.  .  .  .  I  had  a  case.  I  have  a  case.  It  is 
a  case  of  passionate  faith  triumphing  over  every  doubt 
and  impossibility,  a  case  real  enough  to 'understand  for 
those  who  understand,  but  very  difficult  to  state.  I  tried 
to  convey  it  to  her. 

I  do  not  remember  at  all  clearly  what  I  wrote  to  her. 
It  has  disappeared  from  existence.  But  it  was  certainly  a 
long  letter.  Throughout  this  book  I  have  been  trying  to 
tell  you  the  growth  of  my  views  of  life  and  its  purpose, 
from  my  childish  dreams  and  Harbury  attitudes  to  those 
ideas  of  human  development  that  have  made  me  under- 
take the  work  I  do.  It  is  not  glorious  work  I  know,  as 
the  work  of  great  artists  and  poets  and  leaders  is  glorious, 
but  it  is  what  I  find  best  suits  my  gifts  and  my  want  of 
gifts.  Greater  men  will  come  at  last  to  build  within  my 
scaffoldings.  In  some  summary  phrasing  I  must  have  set 
out  the  gist  of  this.  I  must  have  explained  my  sense  of 
the  supreme  importance  of  mental  clarification  in  human 
life.  All  this  is  manifest  in  her  reply.  And  I  think  too 
I  did  my  best  to  tell  her  plainly  the  faith  that  was  in  me, 
and  why  life  seemed  worth  while  to  me.  .  .  . 

295 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

Her  second  letter  came  after  an  interval  of  only  a  few 
days  from  the  despatch  of  mine.  She  began  abruptly. 

"I  won't  praise  your  letter  or  your  beliefs.  They  are 
fine  and  large — and  generous — like  you.  Just  a  little 
artificial  (but  you  will  admit  that),  as  though  you  had 
felt  them  give  here  and  there  and  had  made  up  your 
mind  they  shouldn't.  At  times  it's  oddly  like  looking  at 
the  Alps,  the  real  Alps,  and  finding  that  every  now  and 
then  the  mountains  have  been  eked  out  with  a  plank 
and  canvas  Earl's  Court  background.  .  .  .  Yes,  I  like 
what  you  say  about  Faith.  I  believe  you  are  right.  I 
wish  I  could — perhaps  some  day  I  shall — light  up  and  feel 

you  are  right.  But — but That  large,  respectable 

project,  the  increase  of  wisdom  and  freedom  and  self- 
knowledge  in  the  world,  the  calming  of  wars,  the  ending  of 
economic  injustice  and  so  on  and  so  on 

"When  I  read  it  first  it  was  like  looking  at  a  man  in 
profile  and  finding  him  solid  and  satisfactory,  and  then 
afterwards  when  I  thought  it  all  over  and  looked  for 
the  particular  things  that  really  matter  to  me  and  tried 
to  translate  it  into  myself — nothing  is  of  the  slightest 
importance  in  the  world  that  one  cannot  translate  into 
oneself — then  I  began  to  realize  just  how  amazingly 
deficient  you  are.  It  was  like  walking  round  that  person 
in  profile  and  finding  his  left  side  wasn't  there — with 
everything  perfect  on  the  right,  down  to  the  buttons.  A 
kind  of  intellectual  Lorelei — sideways.  You've  planned 
out  your  understandings  and  tolerances  and  enquiries 
and  clearings-up  as  if  the  world  were  all  just  men — or 
citizens — and  nothing  doing  but  racial  and  national  and 
class  prejudices  and  the  exacting  and  shirking  of  labor, 
and  you  seem  to  ignore  altogether  that  man  is  a  sexual 

296 


MARY   WRITES 

animal  first— first,  Stephen,  first— that  he  has  that  in 
common  with  all  the  animals,  that  it  made  him  indeed 
because  he  has  it  more  than  they  have — and  after  that, 
a  long  way  after  that,  he  is  the  labor-economizing,  war- 
and  feud-making  creature  you  make  him  out  to  be.  A 
long  way  after  that.  .  .  . 

"Man  is  the  most  sexual  of  all  the  beasts,  Stephen. 
Half  of  him,  womankind,  rather  more  than  half,  isn't 
simply  human  at  all,  it's  specialized,  specialized  for  the 
young,  not  only  naturally  and  physically  as  animals  are, 
but  mentally  and  artificially.  Womankind  isn't  human, 
it's  reduced  human.  It's  'the  sex'  as  the  Victorians 
used  to  say,  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Lex  Julia 
and  the  point  of  view  of  Mr.  Malthus,  and  the  point  of 
view  of  biologists  and  saints  and  artists  and  everyone 
who  deals  in  feeling  and  emotion — and  from  the  point  of 
view  of  all  us  poor  specialists,  smothered  up  in  our  clothes 
and  restrictions — the  future  of  the  sex  is  the  centre  of 
the  whole  problem  of  the  human  future,  about  which  you 
are  concerned.  All  this  great  world-state  of  your  man's 
imagination  is  going  to  be  wrecked  by  us  if  you  ignore  us, 
we  women  are  going  to  be  the  Goths  and  Huns  of  another 
Decline  and  Fall.  We  are  going  to  sit  in  the  conspicuous 
places  of  the  world  and  loot  all  your  patient  accumulations. 
We  are  going  to  abolish  your  offspring  and  turn  the  princes 
among  you  into  undignified  slaves.  Because,  you  see, 
specialized  as  we  are,  we  are  not  quite  specialized,  we  are 
specialized  under  duress,  and  at  the  first  glimpse  of  a 
chance  we  abandon  our  cradles  and  drop  our  pots  and 
pans  and  go  for  the  vast  and  elegant  side  possibilities — 
of  our  specialization.  Out  we  come,  looking  for  the  fun 
the  men  are  having.  Dress  us,  feed  us,  play  with  us! 

297 


THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS 

We'll  pay  you  in  excitement, — tremendous  excitement. 
The  State  indeed!  All  your  little  triumphs  of  science  and 
economy,  all  your  little  accumulations  of  wealth  that 
you  think  will  presently  make  the  struggle  for  life  an 
old  story  and  the  millennium  possible — we  spend.  And 
all  your  dreams  of  brotherhood! — we  will  set  you  by 
the  ears.  We  hold  ourselves  up  as  my  little  Christian 
nephews — Philip's  boys — do  some  coveted  object,  and 
say  Quisf  and  the  whole  brotherhood  shouts  'Ego!9 
to  the  challenge.  .  .  .  Back  you  go  into  Individualism 
at  the  word  and  all  your  Brotherhood  crumbles  to  dust 
again. 

"How  are  you  going  to  remedy  it,  how  are  you  going 
to  protect  that  Great  State  of  your  dreams  from  this 
anti-citizenship  of  sex?  You  give  no  hint. 

"You  are  planning  nothing,  Stephen,  nothing  to  meet 
this.  You  are  fighting  with  an  army  all  looting  and 
undisciplined,  frantic  with  the  private  jealousies  that 
centre  about  us,  feuds,  cuts,  expulsions,  revenges,  and 
you  are  giving  out  orders  for  an  army  of  saints.  You 
treat  us  as  a  negligible  quantity,  and  we  are  about  as 
negligible  as  a  fire  in  the  woodwork  of  a  house  that  is 
being  built.  .  .  . 

"I  read  what  I  have  written,  Stephen,  and  I  perceive 
I  have  the  makings  of  a  fine  scold  in  me.  Perhaps 

under  happier  conditions ...  I  should  certainly  have 

scolded  you,  constantly,  continually.  .  .  .  Never  did  a 
man  so  need  scolding.  .  .  .  And  like  any  self-respecting 
woman  I  see  that  I  use  half  my  words  in  the  wrong 
meanings  in  order  to  emphasize  my  point.  Of  course 
when  I  write  woman  in  all  that  has  gone  before  I  don't 
mean  woman.  It  is  a  woman's  privilege  to  talk  or  write 

298 


MARY   WRITES 

incomprehensibly  and  insist  upon  being  understood.  So 
that  I  expect  you  already  to  understand  that  what  I  mean 
isn't  that  men  are  creative  and  unselfish  and  brotherly  and 
so  forth  and  that  women  are  spoiling  and  going  to  spoil 
the  game — although  and  notwithstanding  that  is  exactly 
what  I  have  written — but  that  humans  are  creative  and 
unselfish  et  cetera  and  so  forth,  and  that  it  is  their  sexual, 
egotistical,  passionate  side  (which  is  ever  so  much  bigger 
relatively  in  a  woman  than  in  a  man,  and  that  is  why  I 
wrote  as  I  did)  which  is  going  to  upset  your  noble  and 
beautiful  apple-cart.  '"But  it  is  not  only  that  by  nature  we  ^ 
are  more  largely  and  gravely  and  importantly  sexual  than 
men  but  that  men  have  shifted  the  responsibility  for  at-  j 
traction  and  passion  upon  us  and  made  us  pay  in  servitude  / 
and  restriction  and  blame  for  the  common  defect  of  the  j 
species.j  So  that  you  see  really  I  was  right  all  along  in 
writing  of  this  as  though  it  was  women  when  it  wasn't, 
and  I  hope  now  it  is  unnecessary  for  me  to  make  my 
meaning  clearer  than  it  is  now  and  always  has  been  in  this 
matter.  And  so,  resuming  our  discourse,  Stephen,  which 
only  my  sense  of  your  invincible  literalness  would  ever  have 
interrupted,  what  are  you  going  to  do  with  us? 

"  I  gather  from  a  hint  rather  than  accept  as  a  statement 
that  you  propose  to  give  us  votes. 

" Stephen! — do  you  really  think  that  we  are  going  to 
bring  anything  to  bear  upon  public  affairs  worth  having? 
I  know  something  of  the  contemporary  feminine  intelli- 
gence. Justin  makes  no  serious  objection  to  a  large  and 
various  circle  of  women  friends,  and  over  my  little  sitting- 
room  fire  in  the  winter  and  in  my  corners  of  our  various 
gardens  in  the  summer  and  in  walks  over  the  heather  at 
Martens  and  in  Scotland  there  are  great  talks  and  confes- 

299 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

sions  of  love,  of  mental  freedom,  of  ambitions,  and  belief 
and  unbelief — more  particularly  of  unbelief.  I  have 
sometimes  thought  of  compiling  a  dictionary  of  unbelief, 
a  great  list  of  the  things  that  a  number  of  sweet,  sub- 
missive, value-above-rubies  wives  have  told  me  they  did 
not  believe  in.  It  would  amaze  their  husbands  beyond 
measure.  The  state  of  mind  of  women  about  these  things, 
Stephen,  is  dreadful — I  mean  about  all  these  questions — 
you  know  what  I  mean.  The  bold  striving  spirits  do  air 
their  views  a  little,  and  always  in  a  way  that  makes  one 
realize  how  badly  they  need  airing — but  most  of  the 
nicer  women  are  very  chary  of  talk,  they  have  to  be  drawn 
out,  a  hint  of  opposition  makes  them  start  back  or  prevar- 
icate, and  I  see  them  afterwards  with  their  husbands, 
pretty  silken  furry  feathery  jewelled  silences.  All  their 
suppression  doesn't  keep  them  orthodox,  it  only  makes 
them  furtive  and  crumpled  and  creased  in  their  minds — 
in  just  the  way  that  things  get  crumpled  and  creased  if 
they  are  always  being  shoved  back  into  a  drawer.  You 
have  only  to  rout  about  in  their  minds  for  a  bit.  They 
pretend  at  first  to  be  quite  correct,  and  then  out  comes  the 
nasty  little  courage  of  the  darkness.  Sometimes  there  is 
even  an  apologetic  titter.  They  are  quite  emancipated, 
they  say;  I  have  misunderstood  them.  Their  emanci- 
pation is  like  those  horrid  white  lizards  that  grow  in  the 
Kentucky  caves  out  of  the  sunlight.  They  tell  you  they 
don't  see  why  they  shouldn't  do  this  or  that — mean  things, 
underhand  things,  cheap,  vicious,  sensual  things.  .  .  . 
Are  there,  I  wonder,  the  same  dreadful  little  caverns  in 
men?  I  doubt  it.  And  then  comes  a  situation  that 
really  tries  their  quality.  .  .  .  Think  of  the  quandary  I 
got  into  with  you,  Stephen.  And  for  my  sex  I'm  rather  a 

300 


MARY   WRITES 

daring  person.  The  way  in  which  I  went  so  far — and 
then  ran  away.  I  had  a  kind  of  excuse — in  my  illness. 
That  illness !  Such  a  queer  untimely  feminine  illness. 

"We're  all  to  pieces,  Stephen.  That's  what  brought 
down  Rome.  The  women  went  to  pieces  then,  and  the 
women  are  going  to  pieces  to-day.  What's  the  good  of 
having  your  legions  in  the  Grampians  and  marching  up 
to  Philae,  while  the  wives  are  talking  treason  in  your 
houses?  It's  no  good  telling  us  to  go  back  to  the  Ancient 
Virtues.  The  Ancient  Virtues  haven't  kept.  The  An- 
cient Virtues  in  an  advanced  state  of  decay  is  what  was  the 
matter  with  Rome  and  what  is  the  matter  with  us.  You 
can't  tell  a  woman  to  go  back  to  the  spinning-wheel  and 
the  kitchen  and  the  cradle,  when  you  have  power-looms, 
French  cooks,  hotels,  restaurants  and  modern  nurseries. 
We've  overflowed.  We've  got  to  go  on  to  a  lot  of  New 
Virtues.  And  in  all  the  prospect  before  me — I  can't 
descry  one  clear  simple  thing  to  do.  .  .  . 

"But  I'm  running  on.  I  want  to  know,  Stephen, 
why  you've  got  nothing  to  say  about  all  this.  It  must 
have  been  staring  you  in  the  face  ever  since  I  spent  my 
very  considerable  superfluous  energies  in  wrecking  your 
career.  Because  you  know  I  wrecked  it,  Stephen.  I 
knew  I  was  wrecking  it  and  I  wrecked  it.  I  knew  exactly 
what  I  was  doing  all  the  time.  I  had  meant  to  be  so  fine 
a  thing  for  you,  a  mothering  friend,  to  have  that  dear 
consecutive  kindly  mind  of  yours  steadying  mine,  to  have 
seen  you  grow  to  power  overmen,  me  helping,  me  admir- 
ing. It  was  to  have  been  so  fine.  So  fine !  Didn't  I  urge 
you  to  marry  Rachel,  make  you  talk  of  her.  Don't  you 
remember  that?  And  one  day  when  I  saw  you  thinking 
of  Rachel,  saw  a 'kind  of  pride  in  your  eyes! — suddenly  I 
20  301 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

couldn't  stand  it.  I  went  to  my  room  after  you  had  gone 
and  thought  of  you  and  her  until  I  wanted  to  scream.  I 
couldn't  bear  it.  It  was  intolerable.  I  was  violent  to 
my  toilet  things.  I  broke  a  hand-glass.  Your  dignified, 
selfish,  self -controlled  Mary  smashed  a  silver  hand-mirror. 
I  never  told  you  that.  You  know  what  followed.  I 
pounced  on  you  and  took  you.  Wasn't  I — a  soft  and 
scented  hawk?  Was  either  of  us  better  than  some 
creature  of  instinct  that  does  what  it  does  because  it  must  ? 
It  was  like  a  gust  of  madness — and  I  cared,  I  found,  no 
more  for  your  career  than  I  cared  for  any  other  little 
thing,  for  honor,  for  Rachel,  for  Justin,  that  stood  be- 
tween us.  ... 

"My  dear,  wasn't  all  that  time,  all  that  heat  and 
hunger  of  desire,  all  that  secret  futility  of  passion,  the 
very  essence  of  the  situation  between  men  and  women 
now?  We  are  all  trying  most  desperately  to  be  human 
beings,  to  walk  erect,  to  work  together — what  was  your 
phrase? — 'in  a  multitudinous  unity,'  to  share  what  you 
call  a  common  collective  thought  that  shall  rule  man- 
kind, and  this  tremendous  force  which  seizes  us  and  says 
to  us:  'Make  that  other  being  yours,  bodily  yours,  men- 
tally yours,  wholly  yours — at  any  price,  no  matter  the 
price, '  bars  all  our  unifications.  It  splits  the  whole  world 
into  couples  watching  each  other.  Until  all  our  laws,  all 
our  customs  seem  the  servants  of  that.  It  is  the  passion 
of  the  body  swamping  the  brain;  it's  an  ape  that  has 
seized  a  gun,  a  beautiful  modern  gun.  Here  am  I,  Jus- 
tin's captive,  and  he  mine,  he  mine  because  at  the  first 
escapade  of  his  I  get  my  liberty.  Here  are  we  two,  I  and 
you,  barred  for  ever  from  the  sight  of  one  another,  and  I 
and  you  writing — I  at  any  rate — in  spite  of  the  ill-con- 

302 


MARY   WRITES 

cealed  resentment  of  my  partner.  We're  just  two, 
peeping  through  our  bars,  of  a  universal  multitude. 
Everywhere  this  prison  of  sex.  Have  you  ever  thought 
just  all  that  it  means  when  every  woman  in  the  world  goes 
dressed  in  a  costume  to  indicate  her  sex,  her  cardinal 
fact,  so  that  she  dare  not  even  mount  a  bicycle  in  knicker- 
bockers, she  has  her  hair  grown  long  to  its  longest  because 
yours  is  short,  and  everything  conceivable  is  done  to 
emphasize  and  remind  us  (and  you)  of  the  fundamental 
trouble  between  us?  As  if  there  was  need  of  reminding! 
Stephen,  is  there  no  way  out  of  this?  Is  there  no  way  at 
all?  Because  if  there  is  not,  then  I  had  rather  go  back  to 
the  hareem  than  live  as  I  do  now  imprisoned  in  glass — 
with  all  of  life  in  sight  of  me  and  none  in  reach.  I  had 
rather  Justin  beat  me  into  submission  and  mental  tran- 
quillity and  that  I  bore  him  an  annual — probably  decidu- 
ous— child.  I  can  understand  so  well  now  that  feminine 
attitude  that  implies,  'Well,  if  I  must  have  a  master,  then 
the  more  master  the  better.'  Perhaps  that  is  the  way; 
that  Nature  will  not  let  us  poor  humans  get  away  from 
sex,  and  I  am  merely — what  is  it? — an  abnormality — 
with  whiskers  of  enquiry  sprouting  from  my  mind.  Yet 
I  don't  feel  like  that.  .  .  . 

"I'm  pouring  into  these  letters,  Stephen,  the  concen- 
trated venom  of  years  of  brooding.  My  heart  is  black 
with  rebellion  against  my  lot  and  against  the  lot  of  woman. 
I  have  been  given  life  and  a  fine  position  in  the  world, 
€  made  one  fatal  blunder  in  marrying  to  make  these 
things  secure,  and  now  I  can  do  nothing  with  it  all  and  I 
have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  It  astounds  me  to  think  of  the 
size  of  our  establishments,  Stephen,  of  the  extravagant 
way  in  which  whole  counties  and  great  countries  pay 

303 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

tribute  to  pile  up  the  gigantic  heap  of  wealth  upon  which 
we  two  lead  our  lives  of  futile  entanglement.  In  this 
place  alone  there  are  fourteen  gardeners  and  garden  helps, 
and  this  is  not  one  of  our  garden  places.  Three  weeks 
ago  I  spent  a  thousand  pounds  on  clothes  in  one  great 
week  of  shopping,  and  our  yearly  expenditure  upon  per- 
sonal effect,  upon  our  magnificence  and  our  margins  can- 
not be  greatly  less  than  forty-five  thousand  pounds.  I 
walk  about  our  house  and  gardens,  I  take  one  of  the  car- 
riages or  one  of  the  automobiles  and  go  to  some  large 
pointless  gathering  of  hundreds  and  thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  pounds,  and  we  walk  about  and  say  empty  little 
things,  and  the  servants  don't  laugh  at  us,  the  butlers 
don't  laugh  at  us,  the  people  in  the  street  tolerate  us.  .  .  . 
It  has  an  effect  of  collective  insanity.  .  .  .  You  know  the 
story  of  one  of  those  dear  Barons  of  the  Cinque  Ports — a 
decent  plumber-body  from  Rye  or  Winchelsea — one  of  the 
six — or  eight — who  claimed  the  privilege  of  carrying  the 
canopy  over  the  King" — she  is  speaking  of  King  Ed- 
ward's coronation  of  course — "how  that  he  was  discovered 
suddenly  to  be  speaking  quite  audibly  to  the  sacred  pres- 
ence so  near  to  him:  'It  is  very  remarkable — we  should 
be  here,  your  majesty — very  remarkable.'  And  then  he 
subsided — happily  unheard — into  hopeless  embarrass- 
ment. That  is  exactly  how  I  feel,  Stephen.  I  feel  I 
can't  stand  it  much  longer,  that  presently  I  shall  splutter 
and  spoil  the  procession.  .  .  . 

"  Perhaps  I  don't  properly  estimate  our  position  in- 
the  fabric,  but  I  can't  get  away  from  the  feeling  that 
everything  in  social  life  leads  up  to  this — to  us, — the 
ridiculous  canopy.  If  so,  then  the  universe  means — 
nothing;  it's  blowing  great  forms  and  shapes  as  a  swamp 

3°4 


MARY   WRITES 

blows  bubbles;  a  little  while  ago  it  was  megatheriums  and 
plesiosauriums— if  that's  the  name  for  them— and  now 
it  is  country-houses  and  motor-cars  and  coronation  fes- 
tivals. And  in  the  end— it  is  all  nonsense,  Stephen.  It 
is  utter  nonsense. 

"If  it  isn't  nonsense,  tell  me  what  it  is.  For  me  at 
any  rate  it's  nonsense,  and  for  every  intelligent  woman 
about  me — for  I  talk  to  some  of  them,  we  indulge  in 
seditious  whisperings  and  wit — and  there  isn't  one  who 
seems  to  have  been  able  to  get  to  anything  solider  than 
I  have  done.  Each  of  us  has  had  her  little  fling  at  ma- 
ternity— about  as  much  as  a  washerwoman  does  in  her 
odd  time  every  two  or  three  years — and  that  is  our  ut- 
termost reality.  All  the  rest, — trimmings!  We  go  about 
the  world,  Stephen,  dressing  and  meeting  each  other 
with  immense  ceremony,  we  have  our  seasonal  move- 
ments in  relation  to  the  ritual  of  politics  and  sport,  we 
travel  south  for  the  Budget  and  north  for  the  grouse,  we 
play  games  to  amuse  the  men  who  keep  us — not  a  woman 
would  play  a  game  for  its  own  sake — we  dabble  with  social 
reform  and  politics,  for  which  few  of  us  care  a  rap  except 
as  an  occupation,  we  *  discover'  artists  or  musicians  or 
lecturers  (as  though  we  cared),  we  try  to  believe  in 
lovers  or,  still  harder,  try  to  believe  in  old  or  new  religions, 
and  most  of  us — I  don't — do  our  best  to  give  the  gratifica-  / 
tions:*and  exercise  the  fascinations  that  are  expected  of/ 
us.  ...  H 

"  Something  has  to  be  done  for  women,  Stephen.  We 
are  the  heart  of  life,  birth  and  begetting,  the  home  where 
the  future  grows,  and  your  schemes  ignore  us  and  slide 
about  over  the  superficialities  of  things.  We  are  spoiling 
the  whole  process  of  progress,  we  are  turning  all  the  achieve- 

305 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

ments  of  mankind  to  nothingness.  Men  invent,  create, 
do  miracles  with  the  world,  and  we  translate  it  all  into 
shopping,  into  a  glitter  of  dresses  and  households,  into  an 
immense  parade  of  pride  and  excitement.  We  excite 
men,  we  stir  them  to  get  us  and  keep  us.  Men  turn  from 
their  ideas  of  brotherhood  to  elaborate  our  separate 
cages.  .  .  . 

"I  am  Justin's  wife;  not  a  thing  in  my  heavens  or 
my  earth  that  is  not  subordinated  to  that. 

"Something  has  to  be  done  for  women,  Stephen, 
something — urgently — and  nothing  is  done  until  that 
is  done,  some  release  from  their  intolerable  subjection 
to  sex,  so  that  for  us  everything  else  in  life,  respect, 
freedom,  social  standing,  is  entirely  secondary  to  that. 
But  what  has  to  be  done?  We  women  do  not  know. 
Our  efforts  to  know  are  among  the  most  desolating  of 
spectacles.  I  read  the  papers  of  those  suffrage  women; 
the  effect  is  more  like  agitated  geese  upon  a  common 
than  anything  human  has  a  right  to  be.  ...  That's  why 
I  turn  to  you.  Years  ago  I  felt,  and  now  I  know,  there 
is  about  you  a  simplicity  of  mind,  a  foolishness  of  faith, 
that  is  stronger  and  greater  than  the  cleverness  of  any 
woman  alive.  You  are  one  of  those  strange  men  who  take 
high  and  sweeping  views — as  larks  soar.  It  isn't  that  you 
yourself  are  high  and  sweeping.  .  .  .  No,  but  still  I  turn 
to  you.  In  the  old  days  I  used  to  turn  to  you  and  shake 
your  mind  and  make  you  think  about  things  you  seemed 
too  sluggish  to  think  about  without  my  clamor.  Once 
do  you  remember  at  Martens  I  shook  you  by  the  ears.  .  .  . 
And  when  I  made  you  think,  you  thought,  as  I  could  never 
do.  Think  now — about  women. 

"Stephen,  there  are  moments  when  it  seems  to  me  that 
306 


MARY   WRITES 

this  futility  of  women,  this  futility  of  men's  effort  through\ 
women,  is  a  fated  futility  in  the  very  nature  of  things.! 
We  may  be  saddled  with  it  as  we  are  with  all  the  animal 
infirmities  we  have,  with  appendixes  and  suchlike  things 
inside  of  us,  and  the  passions  and  rages  of  apes  and  a  tail 
— I  believe  we  have  a  tail  curled  away  somewhere,  haven't 
we?  Perhaps  mankind  is  so  constituted  that  badly  as 
they  get  along  now  they  couldn't  get  along  at  all  if  they 
let  women  go  free  and  have  their  own  way  with  life.  Per- 
haps you  can't  have  two  sexes  loose  together,  You  must 
shut  up  one.  I've  a  horrible  suspicion  that  all  these  anti- 
suffrage  men  like  Lord  Cromer  and  Sir  Ray  Lankester 
must  know  a  lot  about  life  that  I  do  not  know.  And  that 
other  man  Sir  Something-or-other  Wright,  who  said  plain- 
ly that  men  cannot  work  side  by  side  with  women  because 
they  get  excited.  .  .  .  And  yet,  you  know,  women  have  had 
glimpses  of  a  freedom  that  was  not  mischievous.  I 
could  have  been  happy  as  a  Lady  Abbess — I  must  have 
space  and  dignity,  Stephen — and  those  women  had  things 
in  their  hands  as  no  women  have  things  in  their  hands  to- 
day. They  came  to  the  House  of  Lords.  But  they  lost 
all  that.  Was  there  some  sort  of  natural  selection?  .  .  . 
"  Stephen,  you  were  made  to  answer  my  mind,  and 
if  you  cannot  do  it  nobody  can.  What  is  your  outlook 
for  women?  Are  we  to  go  back  to  seclusion  or  will  it  be 
possible  to  minimize  sex?  If  you  are  going  to  minimize 
sex  how  are  you  going  to  do  it?  Suppression?  There  is 
plenty  of  suppression  now.  Increase  or  diminish  the  pains 
and  penalties?  My  nephew,  Philip's  boy,  Philip  Chris- 
tian, was  explaining  to  me  the  other  day  that  if  you  boil 
water  in  an  open  bowl  it  just  boils  away,  and  that  if  you 
boil  it  in  a  corked  bottle  it  bangs  everything  to  pieces,  and 

307 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

you  have,  he  says,  'to  look  out/  But  I  feel  that's  a  bad 
image.  Boiling-water  isn't  frantically  jealous,  and  men 
and  women,  are.  But  still  suppose,  suppose  you  trained 
people  not  to  make  such  an  awful  fuss  about  things. 
Now  you  train  them  to  make  as  much  fuss  as  possible.  .  .  . 
"Oh  bother  it  all,  Stephen!  Where's  your  mind  in 
these  matters?  Why  haven't  you  tackled  these  things? 
Why  do  you  leave  it  to  me  to  dig  these  questions  into  you — 
like  opening  a  reluctant  oyster?  Aren't  they  patent? 
You  up  and  answer  them,  Stephen — or  this  correspon- 
dence will  become  abusive.  .  .  ." 


§5 

It  was  true  that  I  did  ignore  or  minimize  sexual  ques- 
tions as  much  as  I  could.  I  was  forced  now  to  think  why 
I  did  this.  That  carried  me  back  to  those  old  days  of 
passion,  memories  I  had  never  stirred  for  many  years. 
And  I  wrote  to  Mary  that  there  was  indeed  no  reason 
but  a  reasonable  fear,  that  in  fact  I  had  dismissed  them 
because  they  had  been  beyond  my  patience  and  self-con- 
trol, because  I  could  not  think  very  much  about  them 
without  an  egotistical  reversion  to  the  bitterness  of  my  own 
case.  And  in  avoiding  them  I  was  only  doing  what  the 
great  bulk  of  men  in  business  and  men  in  affairs  find  them- 
selves obliged  to  do.  They  train  themselves  not  to  think 
of  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  sexual  life,  not  to  tolerate  liber- 
ties even  in  their  private  imaginations.  They  know  it 
is  like  carrying  a  torch  into  a  powder  magazine.  They 
feel  they  cannot  trust  their  own  minds  beyond  the  ex- 
perience, tested  usages,  and  conventions  of  the  ages, 

308 


MARY   WRITES 

because  they  know  how  many  of  those  who  have  ven- 
tured further  have  been  blinded  by  mists  and  clouds  of 
rhetoric,  lost  in  inexplicable  puzzles  and  wrecked  dis- 
astrously. There  in  those  half  explored  and  altogether 
unsettled  hinterlands,  lurk  desires  that  sting  like  adders 
and  hatreds  cruel  as  hell.  .  .  . 

And  then  I  went  on — I  do  not  clearly  remember  now  the 
exact  line  of  argument  I  adopted — to  urge  upon  her  that 
our  insoluble  puzzles  were  not  necessarily  insoluble 
puzzles  for  the  world  at  large,  that  no  one  soldier  fights 
anything  but  a  partial  battle,  and  that  it  wasn't  an  ab- 
solute condemnation  of  me  to  declare  that  I  went  on 
living  and  working  for  social  construction  with  the  car- 
dinal riddles  of  social  order,  so  far  as  they  affected  her, 
unsolved.  Wasn't  I  at  any  rate  preparing  apparatus 
for  that  huge  effort  at  solution  that  mankind  must  ul- 
timately make?  Wasn't  this  dredging  out  and  deepening 
of  the  channels  of  thought  about  the  best  that  we  could 
hope  to  do  at  the  present  time,  seeing  that  to  launch  a 
keel  of  speculation  prematurely  was  only  to  strand  one- 
self among  hopeless  reefs  and  confusions?  Better  prepare  i 
for  a  voyage  to-morrow  than  sail  to  destruction  to-day.  [ 

Whatever  I  put  in  that  forgotten  part  of  my  letter  was 
put  less  strikingly  than  my  first  admissions,  and  anyhow 
it  was  upon  these  that  Mary  pounced  to  the  disregard 
of  any  other  point.  "There  you  are,"  she  wrote,  with 
something  like  elation,  "  there  is  a  tiger  in  the  garden  and 
you  won't  talk  or  think  about  it  for  fear  of  growing  excited. 
That  is  my  grievance  against  so  much  historical  and 
political  and  social  discussion;  its  hopeless  futility  because 
of  its  hopeless  omissions.  You  plan  the  world's  future, 
taking  the  women  and  children  for  granted,  with  Egotis- 

3°9 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

tical  Sex,  as  you  call  it,  a  prowling  monster  upsetting 
everything  you  do.  .  .  ." 

But  I  will  not  give  you  that  particular  letter  in  its 
order,  nor  its  successors.  Altogether  she  wrote  me 
twenty-two  letters,  and  I  one  or  two  more  than  that  num- 
ber to  her,  and — a  thing  almost  inevitable  in  a  discussion 
by  correspondence — there  is  a  lot  of  overlapping  and  re- 
capitulation. Those  letters  spread  over  a  space  of  nearly 
two  and  a  half  years.  Again  and  again  she  insists  upon 
the  monstrous  exaggeration  of  the  importance  of  sex  in 
human  life  and  of  the  need  of  some  reduction  of  its  im- 
portance, and  she  makes  the  boldest  experimental  sug- 
gestions for  the  achievement  of  that  end.  But  she  comes 
slowly  to  recognize  that  there  is  a  justification  for  an  in- 
direct attack,  that  sex  and  the  position  of  women  do  not 
constitute  the  primary  problem  in  that  bristling  system  of 
riddles  that  lies  like  a  hostile  army  across  the  path  of  man- 
kind. And  she  realized  too  that  through  art,  through 
science  and  literature  and  the  whole  enquiring  and  crea- 
tive side  of  man's  nature,  lies  the  path  by  which  those 
positions  are  to  be  outflanked,  and  those  eternal-looking 
impossibles  and  inconceivables  overcome.  Here  is  a 
fragment — saturated  with  the  essence  of  her  thought. 
Three-quarters  of  her  earlier  letters  are  variations  on  this 
theme.  .  .  . 

"What  you  call  'social  order/  Stephen,  all  the  arrange- 
ments seem  to  me  to  be  built  on  subjection  to  sex  even 
more  than  they  are  built  (as  you  say)  on  labor  subjection. 
And  this  is  an  age  of  release,  you  say  it  is  an  age  of  release 
for  the  workers  and  they  know  it.  And  so  do  the  women. 
Just  as  much.  '  Wild  hopes '  indeed !  The  workers'  hopes 
are  nothing  to  the  women's!  It  is  not  only  the  workers 

310 


MARY   WRITES 

who  are  saying  let  us  go  free,  manage  things  differently 
so  that  we  may  have  our  lives  relieved  from  this  intoler- 
able burthen  of  constant  toil,  but  the  women  also  are  say- 
ing let  us  go  free.  They  are  demanding  release  just  as 
much  from  their  intolerable  endless  specialization  as 
females.  The  tramp  on  the  roads  who  won't  work,  the 
swindler  and  the  exploiter  who  contrive  not  to  work, 
the  strikers  who  throw  down  their  tools,  no  longer  for  two- 
pences  and  sixpences  as  you  say  but  because  their  way 
of  living  is  no  longer  tolerable  to  them,  and  we  women, 
who  don't  bear  children  or  work  or  help;  we  are  all  in 
one  movement  together.  We  are  part  of  the  General 
Strike.  I  have  been  a  striker  all  my  life.  We  are  doing 
nothing — by  the  hundred  thousand.  Your  old  social 
machine  is  working  without  us  and  in  spite  of  us,  it 
carries  us  along  with  it  and  we  are  sand  in  the  bearings. 
I'm  not  a  wheel,  Stephen,  I'm  grit.  What  you  say  about 
the  reactionaries  and  suppressionists  who  would  stifle 
the  complaints  of  labor  and  crush  out  its  struggles  to  be 
free,  is  exactly  true  about  the  reactionaries  and  suppres- 
sionists who  would  stifle  the  discussion  of  the  woman's 
position  and  crush  out  her  hopes  of  emancipation.  ..." 

And  here  is  a  page  of  the  peculiar  doubt  that  was  as 
characteristic  of  her  as  the  quick  changes  of  her  eyes. 
It  gives  just  that  pessimistic  touch  that  tempered  her 
valiant  adventurousness,  that  gave  a  color  at  last  to  the 
tragedy  of  her  death.  .  .  . 

"Have  you  ever  thought,  Stephen,  that  perhaps  these^ 
(repressionist)  people  are  lighter  than  you  are — that  if 
the  worker  gets  free  he  won't  work  and  that  if  the  woman 
gets  free  she  won't  furl  her  sex  and  stop  disturbing  things? 
Suppose  she  is  wicked  as  a  sex,  suppose  she  will  trade  on 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

\  her  power  of  exciting  imaginative  men.  A  lot  of  these  new 
women  run  with  the  hare  and  hunt  with  the  hounds, 
beguile  some  poor  innocent  of  a  man  to  ruin  them  and 
then  call  in  fathers,  brother,  husbands,  friends,  chivalry, 
all  the  rest  of  it,  and  make  the  best  of  both  sides  of  a  sex. 
Suppose  we  go  on  behaving  like  that.  After  we've  got 
all  our  emancipations.  Suppose  that  the  liberation  of 
common  people  simply  means  loafing,  no  discipline,  noth- 
ing being  done,  an  end  to  labor  and  the  beginning  of 
nothing  to  replace  it,  and  that  the  liberation  of  women 
simply  means  the  elaboration  of  mischief.  Suppose  that 
it  is  so.  Suppose  you  are  just  tumbling  the  contents  of 
the  grate  into  the  middle  of  the  room.  Then  all  this 
emancipation  is  a  decay,  even  as  conservative-minded 
people  say, — it's  none  the  less  a  decay  because  we  want  it, 
— and  the  only  thing  to  stop  it  is  to  stop  it,  and  to  have 
more  discipline  and  more  suppression  and  say  to  women 
and  the  common  people:  'Back  to  the  Sterner  Virtues; 
Back  to  Servitude1/  I  wish  I  hadn't  these  reactionary 
streaks  in.my  thoughts,  but  I  have  and  there  you  are.  .  .  ." 
And  then  towards  the  second  year  her  letters  began 
to  break  away  from  her  preoccupation  with  her  position 
as  a  woman  and  to  take  up  new  aspects  of  life,  more 
general  aspects  of  life  altogether.  It  had  an  effect  not 
of  her  having  exhausted  the  subject  but  as  if,  despairing 
of  a  direct  solution,  she  turned  deliberately  to  the  relief  of 
other  considerations.  She  ceased  to  question  her  own 
life,  and  taking  that  for  granted,  wrote  more  largely 
of  less  tangible  things.  She  remembered  that  she  had 
said  that  life,  if  it  was  no  more  than  its  present  appear- 
ances, was  "utter  nonsense."  She  went  back  to  that. 
"One  says  things  like  that,"  she  wrote  "and  not  for  a 

312 


MARY   WRITES 

moment  does  one  believe  it.  I  grumble  at  my  life,  I 
seem  to  be  always  weakly  and  fruitlessly  fighting  my 
life,  and  I  love  it.  I  would  not  be  willingly  dead— for 
anything.  I'd  rather  be  an  old  match -woman  selling 
matches  on  a  freezing  night  in  the  streets  than  be  dead. 
Nothing  nonsensical  ever  held  me  so  tightly  or  kept  me 
so  interested.  I  suppose  really  I  am  full  of  that  very 
same  formless  faith  on  which  you  rely.  But  with  me 
it's  not  only  shapeless  but  intangible.  ...  I  nibble  at 
religion.  I  am  immensely  attracted.  I  stand  in  the 
doorway.  Only  when  they  come  out  to  persuade  me  to 
come  in  I  am  like  a  shy  child  and  I  go  away.  The  temples 
beguile  me  and  the  music,  but  not  the  men.  I  feel  I 
want  to  join  it  and  they  say  'join  us.'  They  are — like 
vergers.  Such  small  things!  Such  dreadful  little  argu- 
ing men!  They  don't  let  you  come  in,  they  want  you  to 
say  they  are  right.  All  the  really  religious  people  seem  to 
be  outside  nowadays  and  all  the  pretending,  cheating, 
atheistical,  vain  and  limited  people  within.  .  .  . 

"But  the  beautiful  things  religion  gives!  The  beauty! 
Do  you  know  Saint  Paul's,  Stephen?  Latterly  I  have 
been  there  time  after  time.  It  is  the  most  beautiful 
interior  in  all  the  world,  so  great,  so  sombrely  dignified, 
so  perfectly  balanced — and  filled  with  such  wonderful 
music,  brimming  with  music  just  as  crystal  water  brims 
in  a  bowl  of  crystal.  The  other  day  I  went  there,  up  into 
a  little  gallery  high  up  under  the  dome,  to  hear  Bach's 
Passion  Music,  the  St.  Matthew  Passion.  One  hangs 
high  and  far  above  the  little  multitudes  below,  the  white- 
robed  singers,  the  white-robed  musicians,  ranks  and  ranks, 
the  great  organ,  the  rows  and  rows  and  rows  of  congrega- 
tion, receding  this  way,  that  way,  into  the  haze  of  the  aisle 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

and  the  transepts,  and  out  of  it  all  streams  the  sound  and 
the  singing,  it  pours  up  past  you  like  a  river,  a  river  that 
rushes  upward  to  some  great  sea,  some  unknown  sea. 
The  whole  place  is  music  and  singing.  ...  I  hang  on  to 
the  railings,  Stephen,  and  weep— I  have  to  weep — and  I 
wonder  and  wonder.  .  .  . 

"One  prays  then  as  naturally  as  one  drinks  when 
one  is  thirsty  and  cold  water  comes  to  hand.  I  don't 
know  whom  I  pray  to,  but  I  pray; — of  course  I  pray. 
Latterly,  Stephen,  I  have  been  reading  devotional  works 
and  trying  to  catch  that  music  again.  I  never  do — 
definitely.  Never.  But  at  times  I  put  down  the  book  and 
it  seems  to  me  that  surely  a  moment  ago  I  heard  it,  that 
if  I  sit  very  still  in  a  moment  I  shall  hear  it  again.  And 
I  can  feel  it  is  there,  I  know  it  is  there,  like  a  bat's  cry, 
pitched  too  high  for  my  ears.  I  know  it  is  there,  just 
as  I  should  still  know  there  was  poetry  somewhere  if  some 
poor  toothless  idiot  with  no  roof  to  his  mouth  and  no 
knowledge  of  any  but  the  commonest  words  tried  to  read 
Shelley  to  me.  .  .  . 

"I  wish  I  could  pray  with  you,  Stephen;  I  wish  I 
could  kneel  down  somewhere  with  you  of  all  people  and 
pray." 

§6 

Presently  our  correspondence  fell  away.  The  gaps 
between  our  letters  lengthened  out.  We  never  wrote 
regularly  because  for  that  there  must  be  a  free  exchange 
upon  daily  happenings,  and  neither  of  us  cared  to  dwell 
too  closely  on  our  immediate  lives.  We  had  a  regard  for 
one  another  that  left  our  backgrounds  vague  and  shadowy. 

3U 


MARY   WRITES 

She  had  made  her  appeal  across  the  sundering  silences  to 
me  and  I  had  answered,  and  we  had  poured  out  certain 
things  from  our  minds.  We  could  not  go  on  discussing. 
I  was  a  very  busy  man  now,  and  she  did  not  write  except 
on  my  replies. 

For  a  gap  of  nearly  four  months  neither  of  us  had 
anything  to  say  in  a  letter  at  all.  I  think  that  in  time 
our  correspondence  might  have  altogether  died  away. 
Then  she  wrote  again  in  a  more  familiar  strain  to  tell 
me  of  certain  definite  changes  of  relationship  and  out- 
look. She  said  that  the  estrangement  between  herself 
and  Justin  had  increased  during  the  past  year;  that 
they  were  going  to  live  practically  apart;  she  for  the 
most  part  in  the  Surrey  house  where  her  two  children 
lived  with  their  governesses  and  maids.  But  also  she 
meant  to  snatch  weeks  and  seasons  for  travel.  Upon 
that  they  had  been  disputing  for  some  time.  "I  know 
it  is  well  with  the  children,"  she  wrote;  "why  should  I 
be  in  perpetual  attendance  ?  I  do  nothing  for  them  except 
an  occasional  kiss,  or  half-an-hour's  romping.  Why 
should  one  pretend?  Justin  and  I  have  wrangled  over 
this  question  of  going  away,  for  weeks,  but  at  last  feminine 
persistence  has  won.  I  am  going  to  travel  in  my  own 
fashion  and  see  the  world.  With  periodic  appearances 
at  his  side  in  London  and  Scotland.  We  have  agreed  at 
least  on  one  thing,  and  that  is  upon  a  companion;  she  is 
to  be  my  secretary  in  title,  my  moral  guarantor  in  fact, 
and  her  name  which  is  her  crowning  glory  is  Stella  Sum- 
mersley  Satchel.  She  is  blonde,  erect,  huffy-mannered 
and  thoroughly  up  to  both  sides  of  her  work.  I  partly 
envy  her  independence  and  rectitude — partly  only.  It's 
odd  and  quite  inconsistent  of  me  that  I  don't  envy  her 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

altogether.     In  theory  I  insist  that  a  woman  should  not 
have  charm, — it  is  our  undoing.     But  when  I  meet  one 

without  it ! 

"  I  shall  also  trail  a  maid,  but  I  guess  that  young  woman 
will  learn  what  it  is  to  be  left  behind  in  half  the  cities  of 
Europe  before  I  have  done  with  her.  I  always  lose  my 
maids.  They  are  so  much  more  passive  and  forgettable 
than  luggage — abroad  that  is.  And  Justin  usually  in  the 
old  days  used  to  remember  about  them..  And  his  valet 
used  to  see  after  them, — ^a  most  attentive  man.  Justin 
cannot,  he  says,  have  his  wife  abroad  with  merely  a  com- 
panion; people  would  talk;  maid  it  must  be  as  well. 
And  so  in  a  week  or  less  I  shall  start,  unusually  tailor- 
made,  for  South  Germany  and  all  that  jolly  country, 
companioned  and  maided.  I  shall  tramp — on  the  feet 
God  has  given  me — in  stout  boots.  Miss  Sunimersley 
Satchel  marches,  I  understand,  like  the  British  infantry 
but  on  a  vegetarian  'basis,' — fancy  calling  your  nourish- 
ment a  '  basis ' ! — the  maid  and  so  forth  by  Eilgut.  ..." 


§7 

After  the  letter  containing  that  announcement  she 
wrote  to  me  twice  again,  once  from  Oban  and  then  after 
a  long  interval  from  Siena.  The  former  was  a  scornfully 
minute  description  of  the  English  at  their  holidays  and 
how  the  conversation  went  among  the  women  after  dinner. 
"They  are  like  a  row  of  Japanese  lanterns,  all  blown  out 
long  ago  and  swinging  about  in  a  wind,"  she  wrote — an 
extravagant  image  that  yet  conveys  something  of  the 
large,  empty,  unilluminating  effect  of  a  sort  of  social 

316 


MARY   WRITES 

intercourse  very  vividly.  In  the  second  letter  she  was 
concerned  chiefly  with  the  natural  beauty  of  Italy  and 
how  latterly  she  had  thrice  wept  at  beautiful  things,  and 
what  this  mystery  of  beauty  could  be  that  had  such  power 
over  her  emotions. 

"All  up  the  hillside  before  the  window  as  I  write  the 
herbage  is  thick  with  anemones.  They  aren't  scattered 
evenly  and  anyhow  amongst  the  other  things  but  in  little 
clusters  and  groups  that  die  away  and  begin  again,  like 
the  repetitions  of  an  air  in  some  musical  composition. 
I  have  been  sitting  and  looking  at  them  for  the  better 
part  of  an  hour,  loving  them  more  and  then  more,  and 

the  sweet  sunlight  that  is  on  them  and  in  among  them 

How  marvellous  are  these  things,  Stephen!  All  these 
little  exquisite  things  that  are  so  abundant  in  the  world, 
the  gleaming  lights  and  blossoms,  the  drifting  scents! 
At  times  these  things  bring  me  to  weeping.  ...  I  can't 
help  it.  It  is  as  if  God  who  is  so  stern  and  high,  so  terrible 
to  all  our  appeals,  took  pity  for  a  moment  and  saw  fit  to 
speak  very  softly  and  tenderly.  .  .  ." 

That  was  the  last  letter  I  was  ever  to  have  from  her. 

21 


CHAPTER    THE  ELEVENTH 
THE  LAST  MEETING 


IN  the  summer  of  1911  immediately  after  the  coronation 
of  King  George  there  came  one  of  those  storms  of 
international  suspicion  that  ever  and  again  threaten 
Europe  with  war.  It  seems  to  have  been  brewed  by  some 
German  adepts  at  Welt-Politik,  those  privileged  makers 
of  giant  bombs  who  sit  at  the  ears  of  foreign  ministers 
suggesting  idiotic  wickedness,  and  it  was  brewed  with  a 
sublime  ignorance  of  nearly  every  reality  in  the  case. 
A  German  warship  without  a  word  of  notice  seized  Agadir 
on  the  Atlantic  coast  of  Morocco,  within  the  regions  re- 
served to  French  influence;  an  English  demand  for 
explanations  was  uncivilly  disregarded  and  England  and 
France  and  presently  Germany  began  vigorous  prepara- 
tions for  war.  All 'over  the  world  it  was  supposed  that 
Germany  had  at  last  flung  down  the  gauntlet.  In 
England  the  war  party  was  only  too  eager  to  grasp  what 
it  considered  to  be  a  magnificent  opportunity.  Heaven 
knows  what  the  Germans  had  hoped  or  intended  by  their 
remarkable  coup;  the  amazing  thing  to  note  is  that  they? 
were  not  prepared  to  fight,  they  had  not  even  the  neces- 
sary money  ready  and  they  could  not  get  it ;  they  had  per- 


THE    LAST   MEETING 

haps  never  intended  to  fight,  and  the  autumn  saw  the 
danger  disperse  again  into  diplomatic  bickerings  and 
insincerely  pacific  professions.  But  in  the  high  summer 
the  danger  had  not  dispersed,  and  in  common  with  every 
reasonable  man  I  found  myself  under  the  shadow  of  an 
impending  catastrophe  that  would  have  been  none  the 
less  gigantic  and  tragic  because  it  was  an  imbecility.  It 
was  an  occasion  when  everyone  needs  must  act,  however 
trivially  disproportionate  his  action  may  be  to  the  danger. 
I  cabled  Gidding  who  was  in  America  to  get  together  what- 
ever influences  were  available  there  upon  the  side  of 
pacific  intervention,  and  I  set  such  British  organs  as  I 
could  control  or  approach  in  the  same  direction.  It 
seemed  probable  that  Italy  would  be  drawn,  into  any 
conflict  that  might  ensue;  it  happened  that  there  was  to 
be  a  Conference  of  Peace  Societies  in  Milan  early  in 
September,  and  thither  I  decided  to  go  in  the  not  very 
certain  hope  that  out  of  that  assemblage  some  form  of 
European  protest  might  be  evolved. 

That  August  I  was  very  much  run  down.  I  had  been 
staying  in  London  through  almost  intolerably  hot  weather 
to  attend  a  Races  Congress  that  had  greatly  disappointed 
me.  I  don't  know  particularly  now  why  I  had  been  dis- 
appointed nor  how  far  the  feeling  was  due  to  my  being 
generally  run  down  by  the  pressure  of  detailed  work  and 
the  stress  of  thinking  about  large  subjects  in  little  scraps 
of  time.  But  I  know  that  a  kind  of  despair  came  over 
me  as  I  sat  and  looked  at  that  multicolored  assembly 
and  heard  in  succession  the  heavy  platitudes  of  white 
men,  the  slick,  thin  cleverness  of  Hindoos,  the  rich-toned 
florid  rhetoric  of  negroes.  I  lost  sight  of  any  germ  of 
splendid  possibility  in  all  those  people,  and  saw  all  too 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

plainly  the  vanity,  the  jealousy,  the  self-interests  that  show 
up  so  harshly  against  the  professions  of  every  altruistic 
movement.  It  seemed  all  such  a  windy  business  against 
the  firm  prejudices,  the  vast  accumulated  interests  that 
grind  race  against  race.  We  had  no  common  purpose  at 
all  at  that  conference,  no  proposal  to  hold  us  together. 
So  much  of  it  was  like  bleating  on  a  hillside.  .  .  . 

I  wanted  a  holiday  badly,  and  then  came  this  war 
crisis  and  I  felt  unable  to  go  away  for  any  length  of  time. 
Even  bleating  it  seemed  to  me  was  better  than  acquies- 
cence in  a  crime  against  humanity.  So  to  get  heart  to 
bleat  at  Milan  I  snatched  at  ten  days  in  the  Swiss  moun- 
tains en  route.  A  tour  with  some  taciturn  guide  involving 
a  few  middling  climbs  and  glacier  excursions  seemed  the 
best  way  of  recuperating.  I  had  never  had  any  time  for 
Switzerland  since  my  first  exile  there  years  ago.  I  took 
the  advice  of  a  man  in  the  club  whose  name  I  now  forget 
—if  ever  I  knew  it,  a  dark  man  with  a  scar — and  went  up 
to  the  Schwarzegg  Hut  above  Grindelwald,  and  over  the 
Strahlegg  to  the  Grimsel.  I  had  never  been  up  into  the 
central  mass  of  the  Bernese  Oberland  before,  and  I  was 
amazed  and  extraordinarily  delighted  by  the  vast  lonely 
beauty  of  those  interminable  uplands  of  ice.  I  wished  I 
could  have  lingered  up  there.  But  that  is  the  tragedy  of 
those  sunlit  desolations;  one  may  not  stay;  one  sees  and 
exclaims  and  then  looks  at  a  watch.  I  wonder  no  one  has 
ever  taken  an  arctic  equipment  up  into  that  wilderness, 
and  had  a  good  healing  spell  of  lonely  exaltation.  I  found 
the  descent  from  the  Strahlegg  as  much  of  a  climb  as  I  was 
disposed  to  undertake;  for  an  hour  we  were  coming  down 
frozen  snow  that  wasn't  so  much  a  slope  as  a  slightly 
inclined  precipice.  .  .  . 

320 


THE    LAST   MEETING 

From  the  Grimsel  I  went  over  the  Rhone  glacier  to 
the  inn  on  the  Furka  Pass,  and  then,  paying  off  my  guide 
and  becoming  frankly  a  pedestrian,  I  made  my  way  round 
by  the  Schollenen  gorge  to  Goeschenen,  and  over  the  Susten 
Joch  to  the  Susten  Pass  and  Stein,  meaning  to  descend  to 
Meiringen. 

But  I  still  had  four  days  before  I  went  on  to  Italy,  and 
so  I  decided  to  take  one  more  mountain.  I  slept  at  the 
Stein  inn,  and  started  in  the  morning  to  do  that  agree- 
able first  mountain  of  all,  the  Titlis,  whose  shining  genial 
head  attracted  me.  I  did  not  think  a  guide  necessary, 
but  a  boy  took  me  up  by  a  track  near  Gadmen,  and  left 
me  to  my  Siegfried  map  some  way  up  the  great  ridge  of 
rocks  that  overlooks  the  Engstlen  Alp.  I  a  little  over- 
estimated my  mountaineering,  and  it  came  about  that  I 
was  benighted  while  I  was  still  high  above  the  Joch  Pass 
on  my  descent.  Some  of  this  was  steep  and  needed  cau- 
tion. I  had  to  come  down  slowly  with  my  folding  lantern, 
in  which  a  reluctant  candle  went  out  at  regular  intervals, 
and  I  did  not  reach  the  little  inn  at  Engstlen  Alp  until 
long  after  eleven  at  night.  By  that  time  I  was  very 
tired  and  hungry. 

They  told  me  I  was  lucky  to  get  a  room,  only  one  stood 
vacant;  I  should  certainly  not  have  enjoyed  sleeping  on  a 
billiard  table  after  my  day's  work,  and  I  ate  a  hearty 
supper,  smoked  for  a  time,  meditated  emptily,  and  went 
wearily  to  bed. 

But  I  could  not  sleep.  Usually,  I  am  a  good  sleeper, 
but  ever  and  again  when  I  have  been  working  too  closely 
or  over-exerting  myself  I  have  spells  of  wakefulness,  and 
that  night  after  perhaps  an  hour's  heavy  slumber  I  be- 
came thinly  alert  and  very  weary  in  body'  and  spirit,  and 

321 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

I  do  not  think  I  slept  again.  The  pain  in  my  leg  that  the 
panther  had  torn  had  been  revived  by  the  day's  exertion. 
For  the  greater  part  of  my  life  insomnia  has  not  been  dis- 
agreeable to  me.  In  the  night,  in  the  stillness,  one  has  a 
kind  of  detachment  from  reality,  one  floats  there  without 
light,  without  weight,  feeling  very  little  of  one's  body. 
One  has  a  certain  disembodiment  and  one  can  achieve 
a  magnanimity  of  thought,  forgiveness  and  self-forget- 
\fulness  that  are  impossible  while  the  body  clamors  upon 
pne's  senses.  But  that  night,  because,  I  suppose,  I  was 
so  profoundly  fatigued,  I  was  melancholy  and  despondent. 
I  could  feel  again  the  weight  of  the  great  beast  upon  me 
as  he  clawed  me  down  and  I  clung — desperately,  in  that 
interminable  instant  before  he  lost  his  hold.  .  .  . 

Yes,  I  was  extraordinarily  wretched  that  night.  I  was 
filled  with  self-contempt  and  self -disgust.  I  felt  that  I 
was  utterly  weak  and  vain,  and  all  the  pretensions  and 
effort  of  my  life  mere  florid,  fruitless  pretensions  and  noth- 
ing more.  I  had  lost  all  control  over  my  mind.  Things 
that  had  seemed  secondary  before  became  primary, 
difficult  things  became  impossible  things.  I  had  been 
greatly  impeded  and  irritated  in  London  by  the  manoeuvres 
of  a  number  of  people  who  were  anxious  to  make  capital 
out  of  the  crisis,  self -advertising  people  who  wanted  at  any 
cost  to  be  lifted  into  a  position  of  unique  protest.  .  .  . 
You  see,  that  unfortunate  Nobel  prize  has  turned  the 
advocacy  of  peace  into  a  highly  speculative  profession; 
the  qualification  for  the  winner  is  so  vaguely  defined  that 
a  vast  multitude  of  voluntary  idealists  has  been  created 
and  a  still  greater  number  diverted  from  the  unendowed 
pursuit  of  human  welfare  in  other  directions.  Such  a  man 
as  myself  who  is  known  to  command  a  considerable 

322 


THE    LAST   MEETING 

publicity  is  necessarily  a  prey  to  those  moral  entrepre- 
neurs. All  sorts  of  ridiculous  and  petty  incidents  had 
forced  this  side  of  public  effort  upon  me,  but  hitherto 
I  had  been  able  to  say,  with  a  laugh  or  sigh  as  the  case 
warranted,  "So  much  is  dear  old  humanity  and  all  of 
us";  and  to  remember  the  great  residuum  of  nobility 
that  remained.  Now  fliat  last  saving  consideration 
refused  to  be  credible.  I  lay  with  my  body  and  my 
mind  in  pain  thinking  these  people  over,  thinking  myself 
over  too  with  the  rest  of  my  associates,  thinking  drearily 
and  weakly,  recalling  spites,  dishonesties  and  vanities, 
feuds  and  absurdities,  until  I  was  near  persuaded  that  all 
my  dreams  of  wider  human  understandings,  of  great  ends 
beyond  the  immediate  aims  and  passions  of  common 
everyday  lives,  could  be  at  best  no  more  than  the  refuge  of 
shy  and  weak  and  ineffective  people  from  the  failure  of 
their  personal  lives.  .  .  . 

We  idealists  are  not  jolly  people,  not  honest  simple 
people;  the  strain  tells  upon  us;  even  to  ourselves  we  are 
unappetizing.  Aren't  the  burly,  bellowing  fellows  after 
all  lighter,  with  their  simple  natural  hostility  to  every- 
thing foreign,  their  valiant  hatred  of  everything  unlike 
themselves,  their  contempt  for  aspiring  weakness,  their 
beer  and  lush  sentiment,  their  here-to-day-and-gone-to- 
morrow  conviviality  and  fellowship?  Good  fellows! 
While  we  others,  lost  in  filmy  speculations,  in  moon-and- 
star  snaring  and  the  chase  of  dreams,  stumble  where  even 
they  walk  upright.  .  .  . 

You  know  I  have  never  quite  believed  in  myself,  never 
quite  believed  in  my  work  or  my  religion.  So  it  has 
always  been  with  me  and  always,  I  suppose,  will  be. 
I  know  I  am  purblind,  I  know  I  do  not  see  my  way  clearly 

323 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

nor  very  far;  I  have  to  do  with  things  imperfectly  appre- 
hended. I  cannot  cheat  my  mind  away  from  these  con- 
victions. I  have  a  sort  of  hesitation  of  the  soul  as  other 
men  have  a  limp  in  their  gait.  God,  I  suppose,  has  a 
need  for  lame  men.  God,  I  suppose,  has  a  need  for  blind 
men  and  fearful  and  doubting  men,  and  does  not  intend 
life  to  be  altogether  swallowed  up  in  staring  sight.  Some 
things  are  to  be  reached  best  by  a  hearing  that  is  not  dis- 
tracted by  any  clearer  senses.  But  so  it  is  with  me,  and 
this  is  the  innermost  secret  I  have  to  tell  you. 

I  go  valiantly  for  the  most  part  I  know,  but  despair 
is  always  near  to  me.  In  the  common  hours  of  my  life 
it  is  as  near  as  a  shark  may  be  near  a  sleeper  in  a  ship; 
the  thin  effectual  plank  of  my  deliberate  faith  keeps  me 
secure,  but  in  these  rare  distresses  of  the  darkness  the 
plank  seems  to  become  transparent,  to  be  on  the  verge 
of  dissolution,  a  sense  of  life  as  of  an  abyssmal  flood,  full 
of  cruelty,  densely  futile,  blackly  aimless,  penetrates  my 
defences.  .  .  . 

I  don't  think  I  can  call  these  stumblings  from  con- 
viction unbelief;  the  limping  man  walks  for  all  his  limping, 
and  I  go  on  in  spite  of  my  falls.  "  Though  he  slay  me  yet 
will  I  trust  in  him.  .  .  ." 

I  fell  into  an  inconsecutive  review  of  my  life  under  this 
light  that  touched  every  endeavor  with  the  pale  tints  of 
failure.  And  as  that  flow  of  melancholy  reflection  went 
on,  it  was  shot  more  and  more  frequently  with  thoughts  of 
Mary.  It  was  not  a  discursive  thinking  about  Mary  but  a 
definite  fixed  direction  of  thought  towards  her.  I  had  not 
so  thought  of  her  for  many  years.  I  wanted  her,  I  felt, 
to  come  to  me  and  help  me  out  of  this  distressful  pit  into 
which  my  spirit  had  fallen.  I  believed  she  could.  I 

324 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

perceived  our  separation  as  an  irreparable  loss.  She  had 
a  harder,  clearer  quality  than  I,  a  more  assured  courage, 
a  readier,  surer  movement  of  the  mind.  Always  she  hadl 
"lift"  for  me.  And  then  I  had  a  curious  impression  that 
I  had  heard  her  voice  calling  my  name,  as  one  might  call 
out  in  one's  sleep.  I  dismissed  it  as  an  illusion,  and  then 
I  heard  it  again.  So  clearly  that  I  sat  up  and  listened — 
breathless.  .  .  . 

Mixed  up  with  all  this  was  the  intolerable  uproar  and 
talking  of  a  little  cascade  not  fifty  yards  from  the  hotel. 
It  is  curious  how  distressing  that  clamor  of  running  water, 
which  is  so  characteristic  of  the  Alpine  night,  can  become. 
At  last  those  sounds  can  take  the  likeness  of  any  voice 
whatever.  The  water,  I  decided,  had  called  to  me,  and 
now  it  mocked  and  laughed  at  me.  .  .  . 

The  next  morning  I  descended  at  some  late  hour  by 
Swiss  reckoning,  and  discovered  two  ladies  in  the  morn- 
ing sunlight  awaiting  breakfast  at  a  little  green  table. 
One  rose  slowly  at  the  sight  of  me,  and  stood  and  surveyed 
me  with  a  glad  amazement. 


§2 

There  she  stood  real  and  solid,  a  little  unfamiliar  in  her 
tweeds  and  with  her  shining  eyes  intimate  and  unfor- 
gettable, as  though  I  had  never  ceased  to  see  them  for  all 
those  intervening  years.  And  bracing  us  both  and  hold- 
ing back  our  emotion  was,  quite  unmistakably,  Miss 
Summersley  Satchel,  a  blonde  business-like  young  woman 
with  a  stumpy  nose  very  cruelly  corrugated  and  inflamed 
by  a  pince-nez  that  savagely  did  much  more  than  its  duty 

325 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

by  its  name.  She  remained  seated,  tilting  her  chair  a 
little,  pushing  herself  back  from  the  table  and  regarding 
\me — intelligently. 

It  was  one  of  those  moments  in  life  when  one  is  taken 
unawares.  I  think  our  common  realization  of  the  need 
of  masking  the  reality  of  our  encounter,  the  hasty  search 
in  our  minds  for  some  plausible  face  upon  this  meeting, 
must  have  been  very  obvious  to  the  lady  who  observed 
us.  Mary's  first  thought  was  for  a  pseudonym.  Mine 
was  to  make  it  plain  we  met  by  accident. 

"It's  Mr. — Stephen!"  said  Mary. 

"It's  you!" 

"Dropped  out  of  the  sky!" 

"  From  over  there.     I  was  benighted  and  go  there  late." 

"Very  late?" 

"One  gleam  of  light — and  a  yawning  waiter.  Or  I 
should  have  had  to  break  windows.  .  .  .  And  then  I  meet 
you!" 

Then  for  a  moment  or  so  we  were  silent,  with  our  sense 
of  the  immense  gravity  of  this  position  growing  upon  us. 
A  little  tow-headed  waiter-boy  appeared  with  their  coffee 
and  rolls  on  a  tray  poised  high  on  his  hand. 

"You'll  have  your  coffee  out  here  with  us?"  said 
Mary. 

"Where  else?"  said  I,  as  though  there  was  no  con- 
ceivable alternative,  and  told  the  tow-headed  waiter. 

Belatedly  Mary  turned  to  introduce  me  to  her  secre- 
tary: "My  friend  Miss  Summersley  Satchel.  Mr. — 
Stephen."  Miss  Satchel  and  I  bowed  to  each  other  and 
agreed  that  the  lake  was  very  beautiful  in  the  morning 
light.  "  Mr.  Stephen,"  said  Mary,  in  entirely  unnecessary 
explanation,  "is  an  old  friend  of  my  mother's.  And  I 

326 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

haven't  seen  him  for  years.    How  is  Mrs.  Stephen — and 
the  children?" 

I  answered  briefly  and  began  to  tell  of  my  climb  down 
the  Titlis.  I  addressed  myself  with  unnecessary  explicit- 
ness  to  Miss  Satchel.  I  did  perhaps  over-accentuate  the 
extreme  fortuitousness  of  my  appearance.  .  .  .  From 
where  I  stood,  the  whole  course  of  the  previous  day  after 
I  had  come  over  the  shoulder  was  visible.  It  seemed 
a  soft  little  shining  pathway  to  the  top,  but  the  dangers 
of  the  descent  had  a  romantic  intensification  in  the 
morning  light.  "The  rule  of  the  game,"  said  I,  "is  that 
one  stops  and  waits  for  daylight.  I  wonder  if  anyone 
keeps  that  rule." 

We  talked  for  a  time  of  mountains,  I  still  standing  a 
little  aloof  until  my  coffee  came.  Miss  Summersley 
Satchel  produced  that  frequent  and  most  unpleasant  bye- 
product  of  a  British  education,  an  intelligent  interest  in 
etymology.  "I  wonder,"  she  said,  with  a  brow  of  ruffled 
omniscience  and  eyeing  me  rather  severely  with  a  mag- 
nified eye,  "why  it  is  called  Titlis.  There  must  be  some 
reason.  ..." 

Presently  Miss  Satchel  was  dismissed  indoors  on  a 
transparent  excuse  and  Mary  and  I  were  alone  together. 
We  eyed  one  another  gravely.  Perhaps  all  the  more 
gravely  because  of  the  wild  excitement  that  was  quicken- 
ing our  pulse  and  breathing,  and  thrilling  through  our 
nerves.  She  pushed  back  the  plate  before  her  and  put 
her  dear  elbows  on  the  table  and  dropped  her  chin  between 
her  hands  in  an  attitude  that  seemed  all  made  of  little 
memories. 

"I  suppose,"  she  said,  "something  of  this  kind  was 
bound  to  happen." 

327 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

She  turned  her  eyes  to  the  mountains  shining  in  the 
morning  light.  "I'm  glad  it  has  happened  in  a  beautiful 
place.  It  might  have  been — anywhere." 

"Last  night,"  I  said,  "I  was  thinking  of  you  and 
wanting  to  hear  your  voice  again.  I  thought  I  did." 

"I  too.  I  wonder — if  we  had  some  dim  percep- 
tion. .  .  ." 

She  scanned  my  face.  "Stephen,  you're  not  much 
changed.  You're  looking  well.  .  .  .  But  your  eyes, — 
they're  dog-tired  eyes.  Have  you  been  working  too 
hard?" 

"A  conference — what  did  you  call  them  once? — a  Car- 
negieish  conference  in  London.  Hot  weather  and  fuss- 
ing work  and  endless  hours  of  weak  grey  dusty  speeches, 
and  perhaps  that  clamber  over  there  yesterday  was  too 
much.  It  was  too  much.  In  India  I  damaged  a  leg.  .  .  . 
I  had  meant  to  rest  here  for  a  day." 

"Well,— rest  here." 

"With  you!" 

"Why  not?    Now  you  are  here." 

"But After  all,  we've  promised." 

"It's  none  of  our  planning,  Stephen." 

"It  seems  to  me  I  ought  to  go  right  on — so  soon  as 
breakfast  is  over." 

She  weighed  that  with  just  the  same  still  pause,  the 
same  quiet  moment  of  lips  and  eyes  that  I  recalled  so  well. 
It  was  as  things  had  always  been  between  us  that  she 
should  make  her  decision  first  and  bring  me  to  it. 

"It  isn't  natural,"  she  decided,  "with  the  sun  rising 
and  the  day  still  freshly  beginning  that  you  should  go 
or  that  I  should  go.  I've  wanted  to  meet  you  like  this 
and  talk  about  things, — ten  thousand  times.  And  as  for 

328 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

me  Stephen  I  won't  go.  And  I  won't  let  you  go  if  I  can 
help  it.  Not  this  morning,  anyhow.  No.  Go  later  in  the 
day  if  you  will,  and  let  us  two  take  this  one  talk  that 
God  Himself  has  given  us.  We've  not  planned  it.  It's 
His  doing,  not  ours." 

I  sat,  yielding.  "I  am  not  so  sure  of  God's  participa- 
tion," I  said.  "But  I  know  I  am  very  tired,  and  glad  to 

be  with  you.  I  can't  tell  you  how  glad.  So  glad I 

think  I  should  weep  if  I  tried  to  say  it.  ..." 

"Three,  four,  five  hours  perhaps — even  if  people  know. 
Is  it  so  much  worse  than  thirty  minutes?  We've  broken 
the  rules  already;  we've  been  flung  together;  it's  not  our 
doing,  Stephen.  A  little  while  longer — adds  so  little  to 
the  offence  and  means  to  us " 

"Yes,"  I  said,  "but— if  Justin  knows?" 

"He  won't." 

"Your  companion?" 

There  was  the  briefest  moment  of  reflection.  "She's 
discretion  itself,"  she  said. 

"Still " 

"If  he's  going  to  know  the  harm  is  done.  We  may 
as  well  be  hung  for  a  sheep  as  a  lamb.  And  he  won't 
know.  No  one  will  know." 

"The  people  here." 

"Nobody's  here.  Not  a  soul  who  matters.  I  doubt 
if  they  know  my  name.  .  .  .  No  one  ever  talks  to 
me." 

I  sat  in  the  bright  sunshine,  profoundly  enervated  and 
quite  convinced,  but  still  maintaining  out  of  mere  indo- 
lence a  show  of  hesitation.  .  .  . 

"You  take  the  good  things  God  sends  you,  Stephen — 
as  I  do.  You  stay  and  talk  with  me  now,  before  the  cur- 

329 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

» 

tain  falls  again.  We've  tired  of  letters.  You  stay  and 
talk  to  me. 

"Here  we  are,  Stephen,  and  it's  the  one  chance  that 
is  ever  likely  to  come  to  us  in  all  our  lives.  Well  keep 
the  point  of  honor;  and  you  shall  go  to-day.  But  don't 
let's  drive  the  point  of  honor  into  the  quick.  Go  easy 
Stephen,  old  friend.  .  .  .  My  dear,  my  dear!  What 
has  happened  to  you?  Have  you  forgotten?  Of  course! 
Is  it  possible  for  you  to  go,  mute,  with  so  much  that 
we  can  say.  .  .  .  And  these  mountains  and  this  sun- 
light! .  .  ." 

I  looked  up  to  see  her  with  her  elbows  on  the  table  and 
her  hands  clasped  under  her  phin;  that  face  close  to  mine, 
her  dear  blue  eyes  watching  me  and  her  lips  a  little  apart. 

No  other  human  being  has  ever  had  that  effect  upon 
me,  so  that  I  seem  to  feel  the  life  and  stir  in  that  other 
body  more  than  I  feel  my  own. 


§3 

From  the  moment  when  I  confessed  my  decision  to 
stay  we  gave  no  further  thought  to  the  rightfulness  or 
wisdom  of  spending  the  next  few  hours  together.  We 
thought  only  of  those  hours.  Things  lent  themselves  to 
us.  We  stood  up  and  walked  out  in  front  of  the  hotel 
and  there  moored  to  a  stake  at  the  edge  of  the  water 
was  a  little  leaky  punt,  the  one  vessel  on  the  Engstlen 
See.  We  would  take  food  with  us  as  we  decided  and  row 
out  there  to  where  the  vast  cliffs  came  sheer  from  the 
water,  out  of  earshot  or  interference  and  talk  for  all  the 
time  we  had.  And  I  remember  now  how  Mary  stood  and 

330 


THE    LAST   MEETING 

called  to  Miss  Satchel's  window  to  tell  her  of  this  inten- 
tion, and  how  I  discovered  again  that  exquisite  slender 
grace  I  knew  so  well. 

You  know  the  very  rowing  out  from  the  shore  had  in 
it  something  sweet  and  incredible.  It  was  as  if  we  were 
but  dreaming  together  and  might  at  any  moment  awaken 
again,  countless  miles  and  a  thousand  things  apart.  I 
rowed  slowly  with  those  clumsy  Swiss  oars  that  one  must 
thrust  forward,  breaking  the  smooth  crystal  of  the  lake, 
and  she  sat  sideways  looking  forward,  saying  very  little 
and  with  much  the  same  sense  I  think  of  enchantment 
and  unreality.  And  I  saw  now  for  the  first  time  as  I 
watched  her  over  my  oars  that  her  face  was  changed; 
she  was  graver  and,  I  thought,  stronger  than  the  Mary  I 
had  known. 

Even  now  I  can  still  doubt  if  that  boat  and  lake  werej 
real.    And  yet  I  remember  even  minute  and  irrelevant  | 
details  of  the  day's  impressions  with  an  extraordinary 
and  exquisite  vividness.     Perhaps  it  is  that  very  luminous 
distinctness  which  distinguishes  these  events  from  the 
common  experiences  of  life  and  puts  them  so  above  the 
quality  of  things  that  are  ordinarily  real. 

We  rowed  slowly  past  a  great  headland  and  into  the 
bay  at  the  upper  end  of  the  water.  We  had  not  realized 
at  first  that  we  could  row  beyond  the  range  of  the  hotel 
windows.  The  rock  that  comes  out  of  the  lake  is  a  clear 
dead  white  when  it  is  dry,  and  very  faintly  tinted,  but 
when  it  is  wetted  it  lights  warmly  with  flashes  and  blotches 
of  color,  and  is  seen  to  be  full  of  the  most  exquisite  and 
delicate  veins.  It  splinters  vertically  and  goes  up  in 
cliffs,  very  high  and  sculptured,  with  a  quality  almost 
of  porcelain,  that  at  a  certain  level  suddenly  become 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

more  rude  and  massive  and  begin  to  overhang.  Under 
the  cliffs  the  water  is  very  deep  and  blue-green,  and  runs 
here  and  there  into  narrow  clefts.  This  place  where  we 
landed  was  a  kind  of  beach  left  by  the  recession  of  the 
ice,  all  the  rocks  immediately  about  us  were  ice-worn, 
and  the  place  was  paved  with  ice- worn  boulders.  Two 
huge  bluffs  put  their  foreheads  together  above  us  and 
hid  the  glacier  from  us,  but  one  could  feel  the  near  presence 
of  ice  in  the  air.  Out  between  them  boiled  a  little  torrent, 
and  spread  into  a  hundred  intercommunicating  channels 
amidst  the  great  pebbles.  And  those  pebbles  were  cov- 
ered by  a  network  of  marvellously  gnarled  and  twisted 
stems  bearing  little  leaves  and  blossoms,  a  network  at 
once  very  ancient  and  very  fresh,  giving  a  peculiar  gentle- 
ness and  richness  to  the  Alpine  severity  that  had  dwarfed 
and  tangled  them.  It  was  astounding  that  any  plant 
could  find  nourishment  among  those  stones.  The  great 
headland,  with  patches  of  yellowish  old  snow  still  linger- 
ing here  and  there  upon  its  upper  masses,  had  crept 
insensibly  between  us  and  the  remote  hotel  and  now  hid 
it  altogether.  There  was  nothing  to  remind  us  of  the 
world  that  had  separated  us,  except  that  old  and  leaky 
boat  we  had  drawn  up  upon  the  stones  at  the  limpid 
water's  edge. 

"It  is  as  if  we  had  come  out  of  life  together/'  she 
whispered,  giving  a  voice  to  my  thought. 

She  sat  down  upon  a  boulder  and  I  sat  on  a  lower  slab 
a  yard  or  so  away,  and  we  looked  at  one  another.  "It's 
still  unreal,"  she  said. 

I  felt  awkward  and  at  a  loss  as  I  sat  there  before  her, 
as  a  man  unused  to  drawing-rooms  might  feel  in  the 
presence  of  a  strange  hostess. 

332 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

"You  are  so  you,"  I  said;  "so  altogether  my  nearest 
thing— and  so  strange  too,  so  far  off,  that  I  feel— shy.  .  .  . 

"I'm  shy,"  I  repeated.  "I  feel  that  if  I  speak  loudly 
all  this  will  vanish.  .  .  ." 

I  looked  about  me.  "But  surely  this  is  the  most 
beautiful  place  in  the  whole  world!  Is  it  indeed  in  the 
world?" 

"Stephen,  my  dear,"  she  began  presently,  "what  a 
strange  thing  life  is !  Strange !  The  disproportions !  The 
things  that  will  not  fit  together.  The  little  things  that 
eat  us  up,  and  the  beautiful  things  that  might  save 
us  and  don't  save  us,  don't  seem  indeed  to  have  any 
meaning  in  regard  to  ordinary  sensible  affairs.  .  .  .  This 
beauty.  .  .  . 

"Do  you  remember,  Stephen,  how  long  ago  in  the 
old  park  you  and  I  talked  about  immortality  and  you 
said  then  you  did  not  want  to  know  anything  of  what 
comes  after  life.  Even  now  do  you  want  to  know? 
You  are  too  busy  and  I  am  not  busy  enough.  I  want 
Jo  be  sure,  not  only  to  know,  but  to  know  that  it  is  so, 
that  this  life — no,  not  this  life,  but  that  life,  is  only  the 
bleak  twilight  of  the  morning.  I  think  death — just  dead 
death — after  the  life  I  have  had  is  the  most  impossible  of 
ends.  .  .  .  You  don't  want — particularly?  I  want  to  pas- 
sionately. I  want  to  live  again — out  of  this  body,  Stephen, 
and  all  that  it  carries  with  it,  to  be  free — as  beautiful 
things  are  free.  To  be  free  as  this  is  free — an  exquisite 
clean  freedom.  .  .  . 

"I  can't  believe  that  the  life  of  this  earth  is  all  that 

there  is  for  us — or  why  should  we  ever  think  it  strange? 

Why  should  we  still  find  the  ordinary  matter-of-fact 

things  of  everyday  strange?    We  do — because  they  aren't 

22  333 


T_HE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

— us.  .  .  .  Eating.  Stuffing  into  ourselves  thin  slices  of 
what  were  queer  little  hot  and  eager  beasts.  .  .  .  The 
perpetual  need  to  do  such  things.  And  all  the  mad  fury 
of  sex,  Stephen!  .  .  .  We  don't  live,  we  suffocate  in  our 
living  bodies.  They  storm  and  rage  and  snatch;  it  isn't 
us,  Stephen,  really.  It  can't  be  us.  It's  all  so  excessive 
— if  it  is  anything  more  than  the  first  furious  rush  into 
existence  of  beings  that  will  go  on — go  on  at  last  to  quite 
beautiful  real  things.  Like  this  perhaps.  To-day  the 
world  is  beautiful  indeed  with  the  sun  shining  and  love 
shining  and  you,  my  dear,  so  near  to  me.  .  .  .  It's  so 
incredible  that  you  and  I  must  part  to-day.  It's  as  if— 
someone  told  me  the  sun  was  a  little  mad.  It's  so  per- 
fectly natural  to  be  with  you  again.  .  .  ." 

Her  voice  sank.  She  leant  a  little  forward  towards  me. 
"Stephen,  suppose  that  you  and  I  were  dead  to-day. 
Suppose  that  when  you  imagined  you  were  climbing  yester- 
day, you  died.  Suppose  that  yesterday  you  died  and  that 
you  just  thought  you  were  still  climbing  as  you  made  your 
way  to  me.  Perhaps  you  are  dead  up  there  on  the  moun- 
tain and  I  am  lying  dead  in  my  room  in  this  hotel,  and 
this  is  the  Great  Beginning.  .  .  . 

"Stephen,  I  am  talking  nonsense  because  I  am  so  happy 
to  be  with  you  here.  .  .  ." 


For  a  time  we  said  very  little.  Then  irregularly, 
disconnectedly,  we  began  to  tell  each  other  things  about 
ourselves. 

The  substance  of  our  lives  seemed  strangely  objective 
334 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

that  day;  we  had  as  it  were  come  to  one  another  clean 
out  of  our  common  conditions.  She  told  me  of  her 
troubles  and  her  secret  weaknesses;  we  bared  our  spirits 
and  confessed.  Both  of  us  had  the  same  tale  of  mean 
and  angry  and  hasty  impulses,  both  of  us  could  find 
kindred  inconsistencies,  both  had  an  exalted  assurance 
that  the  other  would  understand  completely  and  forgive 
and  love.  She  talked  for  the  most  part,  she  talked 
much  more  than  I,  with  a  sort  of  wonder  at  the  things 
that  had  happened  to  her,  and  for  long  spaces  we  did 
not  talk  at  all  nor  feel  the  need  of  talking,  and  what 
seems  very  strange  to  me  now,  seeing  that  we  had  been 
impassioned  lovers,  we  never  kissed;  we  never  kissed  at 
all;  I  do  not  even  remember  that  I  thought  of  kissing  her. 
We  had  a  shyness  between  us  that  kept  us  a  little  apart, 
and  I  cannot  remember  that  we  ever  touched  one  another 
except  that  for  a  time  she  took  me  and  led  me  by  the  hand 
towards  a  little  place  of  starry  flowers  that  had  drawn  her 
eyes  and  which  she  wished  me  to  see.  Already  for  us  two 
our  bodies  were  dead  and  gone.  We  were  shy,  shy  of 
any  contact,  we  were  a  little  afraid  of  one  another,  there 
was  a  kind  of  awe  between  us  that  we  had  met  again. 

And  in  that  strange  and  beautiful  place  her  fancy  that 
we  were  dead  together  had  a  fitness  that  I  cannot  possibly 
convey  to  you.  I  cannot  give  you  by  any  writing  the 
light  and  the  sweet  freshness  of  that  high  .desolation. 
You  would  need  to  go  there.  What  was  lovely  in  our 
talk,  being  said  in  that  setting,  would  seem  but  a  rambling 
discourse  were  I  to  write  it  down, — as  I  believe  that  even 
now  I  could  write  it  down — word  for  word  almost,  every 
thought  of  it,  so  fresh  does  it  remain  with  me.  .  .  . 

My  dear,  some  moments  are  eternal.  It  seems  to  me 

335 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

that  as  I  write  to  tell  you  of  this  I  am  telling  you  not  of 
something  that  happened  two  years  ago  but  of  a  thing 
immortal.  It  is  as  if  I  and  Mary  were  together  there 
holding  the  realities  of  our  lives  before  us  as  though  they 
were  little  sorry  tales  written  in  books  upon  our  knees.  .  . . 


§5 

It  was  still  in  the  early  afternoon  that  we  came  down 
again  across  the  meandering  ice-water  streams  to  our  old 
boat,  and  pushed  off  and  rowed  slowly  out  of  that  magic 
corner  back  to  every-day  again.  .  .  . 

Little  we  knew  to  what  it  was  we  rowed. 

As  we  glided  across  the  water  and  rounded  the  head- 
land and  came  slowly  into  view  of  the  hotel  again,  Mary 
was  reminded  of  our  parting  and  for  a  little  while  she  was 
disposed  to  make  me  remain.  "If  you  could  stay  a  little 
longer,"  she  said, — "Another  day?  If  any  harm  is  done, 
it's  done." 

"It  has  been  beautiful,"  I  said,  "this  meeting.  It's 
just  as  if — when  I  was  so  jaded  and  discouraged  that  I 
could  have  put  my  work  aside  and  despaired  altogether, — 
some  power  had  said,  '  Have  you  forgotten  the  friendship 
I  gave  you?'  .  .  .  But  we  shall  have  had  our  time.  We've 
met, — we've  seen  one  another,  we've  heard  one  another. 
We've  hurt  no  one.  ..." 

"You  will  go?" 

"To-day.  Before  sunset.  Isn't  it  right  that  I  should 
go?" 

"Stay,"  she  whispered,  with  a  light  in  her  eyes, 

"No.    I  dare  not." 

336 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

She  did  not  speak  for  a  long  time. 

"Of  course,"  she  said  at  last,  "you're  right.  You 
only  said — I  would  have  said  it  for  you  if  you  had  not. 
You're  so  right,  Stephen.  ...  I  suppose,  poor  silly  little 
things,  that  if  you  stayed  we  should  certainly  begin  mak- 
ing love  to  each  other.  It  would  be — necessary.  We 
should  fence  about  a  little  and  then  there  it  would  be. 
No  barrier — to  stop  us.  And  neither  of  us  wants  it  to 
happen.  It  isn't  what  we  want.  You  would  become 
urgent,  I  suppose,  and  I  should  be — coquettish.  In  spite 
of  ourselves  that  power  would  make  us  puppets.  As  if 

already  we  hadn't  made  love I  could  find  it  in  my  heart 

now.  .  .  .  Stephen  I  could  make  you  stay.  .  .  . 

"Oh!  Why  are  we  so  tormented,  Stephen?  In  the 
next  world  we  shall  meet,  and  this  will  trouble  us  no  longer. 
The  love  will  be  there — oh,  the  love  will  be  there,  like 
something  that  has  at  last  got  itself  fully  born,  got  itself 
free  from  some  queer  clinging  seed-case.  .  .  . 

"We  shall  be  rid  of  jealousy,  Stephen,  that  inflammation 
of  the  mind,  that  bitterness,  that  pitiless  sore,  so  that  I 
shan't  be  tormented  by  the  thought  of  Rachel  and  she  will 
be  able  to  tolerate  me.  She  was  so  sweet  and  wonderful 
a  girl — with  those  dark  eyes.  And  I've  never  done  her 
justice — never.  Nor  she  me.  I  snatched  you  from  her. 
I  snatched  you.  .  .  . 

"Someday  we  shall  be  different.  ...  All  this  putting 
oneself  round  another  person  like  a  fence,  against  everyone 
else,  almost  against  everything  else;  it's  so  wicked,  so 
fierce. 

"  It's  so  possible  to  be  different.  Sometimes  now,  some- 
times for  long  parts  of  a  day  I  have  no  base  passions  at  all 
—even  in  this  life.  To  be  like  that  always!  But  I  can't 

337 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

see  clearly  how  these  things  can  be ;  one  dreams  of  them  in  a 
kind  of  luminous  mist,  and  if  one  looks  directly  at  them, 
they  vanish  again.  .  .  ." 

§6 

And  at  last  we  came  to  the  landing,  and  moored  the 
little  boat  and  walked  up  the  winding  path  to  the  hotel. 
The  dull  pain  of  separation  was  already  upon  us. 

I  think  we  had  forgotten  Miss  Summersley  Satchel 
altogether.  But  she  appeared  as  we  sat  down  to  tea  at 
that  same  table  at  which  we  had  breakfasted,  and  joined 
us  as  a  matter  of  course.  Conceivably  she  found  the 
two  animated  friends  of  the  morning  had  become  rather 
taciturn.  Indeed  there  came  a  lapse  of  silence  so  porten- 
tous that  I  roused  myself  to  effort  and  told  her,  all  over 
again,  as  I  realized  afterwards,  the  difficulties  that  had 
benighted  me  upon  Titlis.  Then  Miss  Satchel  regaled 
Mary  with  some  particulars  of  the  various  comings  and 
goings  of  the  hotel.  I  became  anxious  to  end  this  tension 
and  went  into  the  inn  to  pay  my  bill  and  get  my  knapsack. 
When  I  came  out  Mary  stood  up. 

"  I'll  come  just  a  little  way  with  you,  Stephen/'  she  said, 
and  I  could  have  fancied  the  glasses  of  the  companion 
flashed  to  hear  the  surname  of  the  morning  reappear  a 
Christian  name  in  the  afternoon.  .  .  . 

"Is  that  woman  behind  us  safe?"  I  asked,  breaking 
the  silence  as  we  went  up  the  mountain-side. 

Mary  looked  over  her  shoulder  for  a  contemplative 
second. 

"  She's  always  been — discretion  itself." 

We  thought  no  more  of  Miss  Satchel. 
338 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

"This  parting, "  said  Mary,  "is  the  worst  of  the  price 
we  have  to  pay.  .  .  .  Now  it  comes  to  the  end  there  seem  a 
thousand  things  one  hasn't  said.  .  .  ." 

And  presently  she  came  back  to  that.  "We  shan't 
remember  this  so  much  perhaps.  It  was  there  we  met, 
over  there  in  the  sunlight — among  those  rocks.  I  suppose 
— perhaps — we  managed  to  say  something.  ..." 

As  the  ascent  grew  steeper  it  became  clear  that  if  I  was 
to  reach  the  Melch  See  Inn  by  nightfall,  our  moment  for 
parting  had  come.  And  with  a  "Well,"  and  a  white- 
lipped  smile  and  a  glance  at  the  Argus-eyed  hotel,  she  held 
out  her  hand  to  me.  ' '  I  shall  live  on  this,  brother  Stephen, ' ' 
she  said,  "for  years." 

"I  too,"  I  answered.  .  .  . 

It  was  wonderful  to  stand  and  face  her  there,  and 
see  her  real  and  living  with  the  warm  sunlight  on  her, 
and  her  face  one  glowing  tenderness.  We  clasped  hands ; 
all  the  warm  life  of  our  hands  met  and  clung  and 
parted. 

I  went  on  alone  up  the  winding  path, — it  zigzags  up 
the  mountain-side  in  full  sight  of  the  hotel  for  the  better 
part  of  an  hour — climbing  steadily  higher  and  looking 
back  and  looking  back  until  she  was  just  a  little  strip  of 
white — that  halted  and  seemed  to  wave  to  me.  I  waved 
back  and  found  myself  weeping.  ' '  You  fool !"  I  said  to  my- 
self, "  Go  on" ;  and  it  was  by  an  effort  that  I  kept  on  my 
way  instead  of  running  back  to  her  again.  Presently  the 
curvature  of  the  slope  came  up  between  us  and  hid  her 
altogether,  hid  the  hotel,  hid  the  lakes  and  the  cliffs.  .  .  . 

It  seemed  to  me  that  I  could  not  possibly  see  her  any 
more.  It  was  as  if  I  knew  that  sun  had  set  for  ever. 


339 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 


§7 

I  lay  at  the  Melch  See  Inn  that  night,  and  rose  betimes 
and  started  down  that  wild  grey  gorge  in  the  early  morn- 
ing light.  I  walked  to  Sachseln,  caught  an  early  train  to 
Lucerne  and  went  on  in  the  afternoon  to  Como.  And 
there  I  stayed  in  the  sunshine  taking  a  boat  and  rowing 
alone  far  up  the  lake  and  lying  in  it,  thinking  of  love  and 
friendship  and  the  accidents  and  significance  of  my  life, 
and  for  the  most  part  not  thinking  at  all  but  feeling,  feel- 
ing the  glow  of  our  meeting  and  the  finality  of  our  separa- 
tion, as  one  feels  the  clear  glow  of  a  sunset  when  the  wind 
rises  and  the  cold  night  draws  near.  Everything  was  per- 
vaded by  the  sense  of  her.  Just  over  those  mountains, 
I  thought,  is  Mary.  I  was  alone  in  my  boat,  but  her 
presence  filled  the  sky.  It  seemed  to  me  that  at  any 
moment  I  could  go  to  her.  And  the  last  vestige  of  any 
cloud  between  us  for  anything  we  had  done  or  failed  to 
do  in  these  crises  of  distress  and  separation,  had  vanished 
and  gone  altogether. 

In  the  afternoon  I  wrote  to  Rachel.  I  had  not  written 
to  her  for  three  days,  and  even  now  I  told  her  nothing  of 
my  meeting  with  Mary.  I  had  not  written  partly  because 
I  could  not  decide  whether  I  should  tell  her  of  that  or  not; 
in  the  end  I  tried  to  hide  it  from  her.  It  seemed  a  little 
thing  in  regard  to  her,  a  thing  that  could  not  hurt  her,  a 
thing  as  detached  from  her  life  and  as  inconsecutive  as  a 
dream  in  my  head. 

Three  days  later  I  reached  Milan,  a  day  before  the  formal 
opening  of  the  Peace  Congress.  But  I  found  a  telegram 
had  come  that  morning  to  the  Poste  Restante  to  banish 

340 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

all  thought  of  my  pacific  mission  from  my  mind.     It  came 
from  Paris  and  its  blue  ribbon  of  text  ran: 

"Come  back  at  once  to  London.  Justin  has  been 
told  of  our  meeting  and  is  resolved  upon  divorce.  Will 
do  all  in  my  power  to  explain  and  avert  but  feel  you 
should  know  at  once" 

There  are  some  things  so  monstrously  destructive  to 
all  we  hold  dear  that  for  a  time  it  is  impossible  to  believe 
them.  I  remember  now  that  as  I  read  that  amazing 
communication  through — at  the  first  reading  it  was  a 
little  difficult  to  understand  because  the  Italian  operator 
had  guessed  at  one  or  two  of  the  words,  no  real  sense  of  its 
meaning  came  to  me.  That  followed  sluggishly.  I  felt 
as  one  might  feel  when  one  opens  some  offensive  anony- 
mous letter  or  hears  some  preposterous  threat. 

"What  nonsense!"  I  said,  faint-heartedly.  I  stood  for 
a  time  at  my  bedroom  window  trying  to  shake  this  fact 
altogether  off  my  mind.  But  it  stayed,  and  became  more 
and  more  real.  Suddenly  with  a  start  I  perceived  it  was 
real.  I  had  to  do  things  forthwith. 

I  rang  the  bell  and  asked  for  an  Orario.  "I  shan't 
want  these  rooms.  I  have  to  go  back  to  England/1 1  said. 
"Yes, — I  have  had  bad  news."  .  .  . 


§8 

"We've  only  got  to  explain,"  I  told  myself  a  hundred 
times  during  that  long  sleepless  journey.  The  thundering 
wheels  so  close  beneath  my  head  echoed:  "Explain.  Oh 
yes!  Explain!  Explain!  Explain!" 

34i 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

And  something,  a  voice  to  which  I  would  not  listen, 
urged:  "Suppose  they  do  not  choose  to  believe  what  you 
explain." 

When  I  sat  face  to  face  with  Maxwell  Hartington, 
my  solicitor,  in  his  ink-splashed,  dirty,  yellow-grained 
room  with  its  rows  of  black  tin  boxes,  I  could  no  longer 
ignore  that  possibility.  Maxwell  Hartington  sat  back 
in  his  chair  after  his  fashion,  listening  to  my  story,  breath- 
ing noisily  through  his  open  mouth,  perspiring  little  beads 
and  looking  more  out  of  condition  than  ever.  I  never 
knew  a  man  so  wine-sodden  and  so  sharp-witted. 

"That's  all  very  well,  Stratton,"  he  said,  "between 
ourselves.  Very  unfortunate  and  all  that  sort  of  thing. 
But  it  doesn't  satisfy  Justin  evidently;  and  we've  got 
to  put  a  different  look  on  it  if  we  can,  before  we  go  before 

a  jury.  You  see "  He  seemed  to  be  considering  and 

rejecting  unpalatable  phrases.  ' '  They  won't  understand. ' ' 

"But,"  I  said,  "after  all — a  mere  chance  of  the  same 
hotel.  There  must  be  more  evidence  than  that." 

"You  spent  the  night  in  adjacent  rooms,"  he  said 
dryly. 

"Adjacent  rooms!"  I  cried. 

He  regarded  me  for  a  moment  with  something  bor- 
dering on  admiration.  "Didn't  you  know?"  he  said. 

"No." 

' '  They've  routed  that  out.  You  were  sleeping  with  your 
two  heads  within  a  yard  of  one  another  anyhow.  Thirty- 
six  you  had,  and  she  had  thirty-seven." 

"But,"  I  said  and  stopped. 

Maxwell  Harrington's  admiration  gave  place  I  think 
to  a  slight  resentment  at  my  sustained  innocence.  "And 
Lady  Mary  changed  rooms  with  her  secretary  two  nights 

342 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

before — to  be  near  the  vacant  room.  The  secretary  went 
into  number  12  on  the  floor  below, — a  larger  room,  at 
thirteen  francs  a  day,  and  one  not  exposed  to  the  early 
daylight.  .  .  ." 

He  turned  over  a  paper  on  his  desk.  "You  didn't 
know,  of  course,"  he  said.  "But  what  I  want  to  have" 
— and  his  voice  grew  wrathful — "  is  sure  evidence  that 
you  didn't  know.  No  jury  on  earth  is  going  to  believe 

you    didn't    know.     No    jury! Why," — his    mask 

dropped — "no  man  on  earth  is  going  to  believe  a  yarn 
like  that!  If  that's  all  you  have,  Stratton " 


§9 

Our  London  house  was  not  shut  up — two  servants 
were  there  on  board-wages  against  the  possibility  of 
such  a  temporary  return  as  I  was  now  making — Rachel 
was  away  with  you  three  children  at  Cromingham.  I 
had  not  told  her  I  was  returning  to  London,  and  I  had 
put  up  at  one  of  my  clubs.  Until  I  had  had  a  second 
interview  with  Maxwell  Hartington  I  still  would  not 
let  myself  think  that  it  was  possible  that  Mary  and  I 
would  fail  with  our  explanations.  We  had  the  common 
confidence  of  habitually  unchallenged  people  that  our 
word  would  be  accepted.  I  had  hoped  indeed  to  get 
the  whole  affair  settled  and  abolished  without  anything 
of  it  coming  to  Rachel's  ears.  Then  at  my  leisure  I 
^hould  be  able  to  tell  her  exactly  how  things  had  come 
about.  But  each  day  made  it  clearer  that  things  were 
not  going  to  be  settled,  that  the  monstrous  and  the 
incredible  was  going  to  happen  and  that  Justin  had  set 

343 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

his  mind  implacably  upon  a  divorce.  My  sense  of  com- 
plete innocence  had  already  been  shaken  by  Maxwell 
Hartington;  I  had  come  to  perceive  that  we  had  been 
amazingly  indiscreet,  I  was  beginning  to  think  we  had  been 
criminally  indiscreet. 

I  saw  Maxwell  Hartington  for  a  second  time,  and  it 
became  clear  to  me  I  must  abandon  any  hope  of  keeping 
things  further  from  Rachel.  I  took  my  luggage  round 
to  my  house,  to  the  great  astonishment  of  the  two  servants, 
— they  had  supposed  of  course  that  I  was  in  Italy — and 
then  went  down  on  the  heels  of  a  telegram  to  Rachel.  I 
forget  the  wording  of  that  telegram,  but  it  was  as  little 
alarming  as  possible;  I  think  I  said  something  about 
"back  in  London  for  documents;  shall  try  to  get  down  to 
you."  I  did  not  specify  any  particular  train  or  indeed 
state  definitely  that  I  was  coming  that  day. 

I  had  never  been  to  Cromingham  before.  I  went  to 
the  house  you  occupied  on  the  Esplanade  and  learnt  that 
you  were  all  upon  the  beach.  I  walked  along  the  sea- 
wall scrutinizing  the  various  bright  groups  of  children 
and  nursemaids  and  holiday  people  that  were  scattered 
over  the  sands.  It  was  a  day  of  blazing  sunshine,  and 
between  the  bright  sky  and  the  silver  drabs  of  the  sand 
stretched  the  low  levels  of  a  sea  that  had  its  customary 
green-grey  touched  for  once  with  something  of  the  sap- 
phire glow  of  the  Mediterranean.  Here  and  there  were 
gay  little  umbrella  tents  or  canvas  shelters,  and  a  bather 
or  so  and  pink  and  white  wading  children  broke  the 
dazzling  edge  of  foam.  And  I  sought  you  with  a  kind  of 
reluctance  as  though  finding  you  would  bring  nearer  the 
black  irrational  disaster  that  hung  over  us  all. 

And  when  I  found  you  at  last  you  were  all  radiantly 
344 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

happy  and  healthy,  the  prettiest  of  families,  and  only  your 
mother  was  touched  with  any  gravity  deeper  than  the 
joy  of  sunshine  and  sea.  You  and  Mademoiselle  Potm- 
an those  days  her  ministrations  were  just  beginning — were 
busy  constructing  a  great  sea-wall  that  should  really  and 
truly  stop  the  advancing  tide.  Rachel  Two  was  a  little 
apart,  making  with  infinite  contentment  an  endless 
multitude  of  conical  sand  pies  with  her  little  tin  pail. 
Margaret,  a  pink  inarticulate  lump,  scrabbled  in  the  warm 
sand  under  Jessica's  care.  Your  mother  sat  and  watched 
you — thoughtfully.  And  before  any  of  you  knew  that  I 
was  there  my  shadow  fell  across  you  all. 

You  accepted  my  appearance  when  I  ought  to  have 
been  in  Italy  with  the  unquestioning  confidence  with 
which  you  still  take  all  my  comings  and  goings.  For 
you,  Italy,  America,  any  place  is  just  round  the  corner.  I 
was  kissed  with  affection  but  haste,  and  you  got  back  to 
your  sand-works  as  speedily  as  possible.  I  inspected 
Rachel  Two's  mounds, — she  was  giving  them  the  names 
of  her  various  aunts  and  uncles — and  patted  the  crowing 
Margaret,  who  ignored  me.  Rachel  had  sprung  to  her 
feet  and  kissed  me  and  now  hovered  radiant  over  me  as 
I  caressed  you  youngsters.  It  was  all  so  warm,  so  real, 
that  for  an  instant  the  dark  threat  that  hung  over  us  all 
vanished  from  my  skies,  to  return  with  the  force  of  a  blow. 

"And  what  has  brought  you  back?"  said  Rachel.  "I 
had  expected  a  month  of  widowhood.  What  can  have 
brought  you  back?" 

The  dancing  gladness  in  her  eyes  vanished  swiftly  as  she 
waited  for  an  answer  to  her  question.  She  caught  the 
note  of  tragedy  from  my  face.  "Why  have  you  come 
back  from  Italy?"  she  asked  in  an  altered  voice. 

345 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

"Rachel,"  I  said  taking  her  arm,  with  a  desolating  sense 
of  the  futility  in  my  gesture  of  protection;  "let  us  walk 

along  the  beach.     I   want  to  tell  you  something 

Something  rather  complicated." 

"  Is  there  going  to  be  war,  Stephen?"  she  asked  abruptly. 

It  seemed  then  that  this  question  which  merely  con- 
cerned the  welfare  of  a  hundred  million  people  or  so  and 
pain,  destruction  and  disaster  beyond  measure,  was  the 
most  trivial  of  digressions. 

"  No,"  I  said.    "  I  haven't  thought  about  the  war." 

"But  I  thought — you  were  thinking  of  nothing  else." 

"This  has  put  it  out  of  my  head.     It's  something 

Something  disastrous  to  us." 

"Something  has  happened  to  our  money?" 

"I  wish  that  was  aU." 

"Then  what  is  it?"  Her  mind  flashed  out.  "It  has 
something  to  do  with  Mary  Justin." 

"How  did  you  know  that?" 

"I  guessed." 

"Well.     It  is.     You  see — in  Switzerland  we  met." 

"You  met!" 

"By  accident.  She  had  been  staying  at  the  hotel  on 
Engstlen  Alp." 

"You  slept  there!"  cried  Rachel. 

"  I  didn't  know  she  was  in  the  hotel  until  the  next  day." 

"And  then  you  came  away!" 

"That  day." 

"But  you  talked  together?" 

"Yes." 

"And    for    some    reason You    never    told    me, 

Stephen!    You  never  told  me.    And  you  met.    But 

Why  is  this,  disaster?" 

346 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

"Because  Justin  knows  and  he  means  to  divorce  her — 
and  it  may  be  he  will  succeed.  .  .  ." 

Rachel's  face  had  become  white,  for  some  time  she  said 
nothing.  Then  slowly,  "And  if  he  had  not  known  and 
done  that — I  should  never  have  known." 

I  had  no  answer  to  make  to  that.  It  was  true.  Rachel's 
face  was  very  still,  and  her  eyes  stared  at  the  situation 
laid  bare  to  her. 

"When  you  began,"  she  choked  presently,  "when  she 
wrote — I  knew — I  felt " 

She  ceased  for  fear  she  might  weep,  and  for  a  time  we 
walked  in  silence. 

"I  suppose,"  she  said  desperately  at  last,  "he  will  get 
his  divorce." 

"I  am  afraid  he  will." 

"There's  no  evidence — you  didn't.  .  .  ." 

"No." 

"And  I  never  dreamt !" 

Then  her  passion  tore  at  her.  "Stephen  my  dear," 
she  wept,  "you  didn't?  you  didn't?  Stephen,  indeed  you 
didn't,  did  you?  You  kept  faith  with  me  as  a  husband 
should.  It  was  an  accident — a  real  accident — and  there 
was  no  planning  for  you  to  meet  together.  It  was  as  you 
say?  I've  never  doubted  your  word  ever — I've  never 
doubted  you." 

Well,  at  any  rate  I  could  answer  that  plainly,  and  I 
did. 

"And  you  know,  Stephen,"  she  said,  "I  believe  you. 
And  I  can't  believe  you.  My  heart  is  tormented.  Why 
did  you  write  to  her?  Why  did  you  two  write  and  go  on 
writing?  And  why  did  you  tell  me  nothing  of  that  meet- 
ing? I  believe  you  because  I  can't  do  anything  but 

347 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

believe  you.  It  would  kill  me  not  to  believe  you  in  a 
thing  that  came  so  near  to  us.  And  yet,  there  it  is,  like  a 
knife  being  twisted  in  my  heart — that  you  met.  Should 
I  have  known  of  your  meeting,  Stephen — ever?  I  know 
I'm  talking  badly  for  you.  .  .  .  But  this  thing  strikes  me 
suddenly.  Out  of  this  clear  beautiful  sky !  And  the  chil- 
dren there — so  happy  in  the  sunshine!  I  was  so  happy. 
So  happy.  With  you  coming.  ...  It  will  mean  shames 
and  law-courts  and  newspapers,  losses  of  friends,  losses  of 
money  and  freedom.  .  .  .  My  mother  and  my  people! 
.  .  .  And  you  and  all  the  work  you  do!  ...  People  will 
never  forget  it,  never  forgive  it.  They  will  say  you 
promised.  ...  If  she  had  never  written,  if  she  had  kept 
to  her  bargain " 

"We  should  still  have  met." 

"Stephen!  .  .  .  Stephen,  you  must  bear  with  me.  .  .  ." 

"This  is  a  thing,"  I  said,  "that  falls  as  you  say  out  of 
the  sky.  It  seemed  so  natural — for  her  to  write.  .  .  . 
And  the  meeting  .  .  .  it  is  like  some  tremendous  disaster 
of  nature.  I  do  not  feel  I  have  deserved  it.  It  is — 
irrational.  But  there  it  is,  little  Rachel  of  my  heart,  and 
we  have  to  face  it.  Whatever  happens  we  have  to  go  on. 
It  doesn't  alter  the  work  we  have  to  do.  If  it  clips  our 
wings — we  have  to  hop  along  with  clipped  wings.  .  .  . 
For  you — I  wish  it  could  spare  you.  And  she — she  too  is 
a  victim,  Rachel." 

"She  need  not  have  written,"  said  Rachel.  "She  need 
not  have  written.  And  then  if  you  had  met " 

She  could  not  go  on  with  that. 

"It  is  so  hard,"  I  said,  "to  ask  you  to  be  just  to  her — 
and  me.  I  wish  I  could  have  come  to  you  and  married 
you — without  all  that  legacy — of  things  remembered. 

348 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

...  I  was  what  I  was.  .  .  .  One  can't  shake  off  a  thing 

in  one's  blood.    And  besides — besides " 

I  stopped  helplessly. 

§  10 

And  then  Mary  came  herself  to  tell  me  there  would  be 
no  divorce. 

She  came  to  me  unexpectedly.  I  had  returned  to  town 
that  evening,  and  next  morning  as  I  was  sitting  down  in 
my  study  to  answer  some  unimportant  questions  Max- 
well Hartington  had  sent  me,  my  parlormaid  appeared. 
" Can  you  speak,"  she  asked,  "to  Lady  Mary  Justin?" 

I  stood  up  to  receive  my  visitor. 

She  came  in,  a  tall  dark  figure,  and  stood  facing  me  in 
silence  until  the  door  had  closed  behind  her.  Her  face 
was  white  and  drawn  and  very  grave.  She  stooped  a 
little,  I  could  see  she  had  had  no  sleep,  never  before 
had  I  seen  her  face  marked  by  pain.  And  she  hesitated. 
.  .  .  "My  dear!"  I  said;  "why  have  you  come  to 
me?" 

I  put  a  chair  for  her  and  she  sat  down. 

For  a  moment  she  controlled  herself  with  difficulty. 
She  put  her  hand  over  her  eyes,  she  seemed  on  the  verge 
of  bitter  weeping.  .  .  . 

"I  came,"  she  said  at  last.  ...  "I  came.  I  had  to 
come  .  .  .  to  see  you." 

I  sat  down  in  a  chair  beside  her. 

"It  wasn't  wise,"  I  said.  "But — never  mind.  You 
look  so  tired,  my  dear!" 

She  sat  quite  still  for  a  little  while. 

Then  she  moved  her  arm  as  though  she  felt  for  me 
23  349 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

blindly,  and  I  put  my  arms  about  her  and  drew  her  head 
to  my  shoulder  and  she  wept.  .  .  . 

"I  knew,"  she  sobbed,  "if  I  came  to  you.  .  .  ." 

Presently  her  weeping  was  over. 

"Get  me  a  little  cold  water,  Stephen,"  she  said.  "Let 
me  have  a  little  cold  water  on  my  face.  I've  got  my 
courage  now  again.  Just  then, — I  was  down  too  low. 
Yes — cold  water.  Because  I  want  to  tell  you — things 
you  will  be  glad  to  hear."  .  .  . 

"You  see,  Stephen,"  she  said — and  now  all  her  self- 
possession  had  returned;  "there  mustn't  be  a  divorce. 
I've  thought  it  all  out.  And  there  needn't  be  a  divorce." 

"Needn't  be?" 

"No." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"I  can  stop  it." 

"But  how?" 

"I  can  stop  it.  I  can  manage— —  I  can  make  a 
bargain.  .  .  .  It's  very  sweet,  dear  Stephen,  to  be  here 
talking  to  you  again." 

She  stood  up. 

"Sit  at  your  desk,  my  dear,"  she  said.  "I'm  all  right 
now.  That  water  was  good.  How  good  cold  things  can 
be!  Sit  down  at  your  desk  and  let  me  sit  here.  And 
then  I  will  talk  to  you.  I've  had  such  a  time,  my  dear. 
Ah!" 

She  paused  and  stuck  her  elbows  on  the  desk  and  looked 
me  in  the  eyes.  And  suddenly  that  sweet,  frank  smile 
of  hers  swept  like  sunshine  across  the  wintry  desolation 
of  her  face.  "We've  both  been  having  a  time,"  she  said. 
"This  odd  little  world, — it's  battered  us  with  its  fists. 
For  such  a  little.  And  we  were  both  so  ridiculously 

350 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

happy.  Do  you  remember  it,  the  rocks  and  the  sunshine 
and  all  those  twisted  and  tangled  little  plants?  And  how 
the  boat  leaked  and  you  baled  it  out !  And  the  parting, 
and  how  you  trudged  up  that  winding  path  away  from  me ! 
A  grey  figure  that  stopped  and  waved — a  little  figure — such 
a  virtuous  figure!  And  then,  this  storm!  this  awful 

hullabaloo!  Lawyers,  curses,  threats .  And  Stella 

Summersley  Satchel  like  a  Fury  of  denunciation.  What 
hatred  that  woman  has  hidden  from  me!  It  must  have 
accumulated.  .  .  .  It's  terrible  to  think,  Stephen,  how 
much  I  must  have  tried  her.  ...  Oh!  how  far  away 
those  Alps  are  now,  Stephen!  Like  something  in  another 
life.  .  .  .  And  here  we  are! — among  the  consequences." 

"But, — you  were  saying  we  could  stop  the  divorce." 

"Yes.  We  can.  I  can.  But  I  wanted  to  see  you, 
— before  I  did.  Somehow  I  don't  feel  lonely  with  you. 
I  had  to  see  you.  .  .  .  It's  good  to  see  you." 

She  looked  me  in  the  face.  Her  tired  eyes  lit  with  a 
gleam  of  her  former  humor. 

"Have  you  thought,"  she  asked,  "of  all  that  will 
happen  if  there  is  a  divorce?" 

"I  mean  to  fight  every  bit  of  it." 

"They'll  beat  you." 

"We'll  see  that." 

"But  they  will.     And  then?" 

"Why  should  one  meet  disaster  half  way?" 

"Stephen!"  she  said;  "what  will  happen  to  you  when 
I  am  not  here  to  make  you  look  at  things?  Because  I 
shan't  be  here.  Not  within,  reach  of  you.  .  .  .  There 
are  times  when  I  feel  like  a  mother  to  you.  Never  more 
than  now.  .  .  ." 

And  then  with  rapid  touches  she  began  to  picture 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

the  disaster  before  me.  She  pictured  the  Court  and 
our  ineffectual  denials,  she  made  me  realize  the  storm  of 
hostility  that  was  bound  to  burst  over  us.  "And  think 
of  me,"  she  said.  "Stripped  I  shall  be  and  outcast." 

"Not  while  I  live!" 

"But  what  can  you  do  for  me?  You  will  have  Rachel. 
How  can  you  stand  by  me?  You  can't  be  cruel  to  Rachel. 
You  know  you  can't  be  cruel  to  Rachel.  Look  me  in  the 
face,  Stephen;  tell  me.  Yes.  .  .  .  Then  how  can  you  stand 
by  me?" 

"Somehow!"  I  cried  foolishly  and  stopped. 

"They'll  use  me  to  break  your  back  with  costs  and  dam- 
ages. There'll  be  those  children  of  yours  to  think  of.  ..." 

"My  God!"  I  cried  aloud.  "Why  do  you  torment 
me?  Haven't  I  thought  enough  of  those  things?  .  .  . 
Haven't  I  seen  the  ruin  and  the  shame,  the  hopeless  trap, 
men's  trust  in  me  gone,  my  work  scattered  and  ended 
again,  my  children  growing  up  to  hear  this  and  that  ex- 
aggeration of  our  story.  And  you .  All  the  bravery 

of  your  life  scattered  and  wasted.  The  thing  will  pursue 
us  all,  cling  to  us.  It  will  be  all  the  rest  of  our  lives  for 
us.  .  .  ." 

I  covered  my  face  with  my  hands. 

When  I  looked  up,  her  face  was  white  and  still,  and  full 
of  a  strange  tenderness.  "I  wouldn't  have  you,  Stephen 
— I  wouldn't  have  you  be  cruel  to  Rachel.  ...  I  just 
wanted  to  know — something.  .  .  .  But  we're  wandering. 
We're  talking  nonsense.  Because  as  I  said,  there  need  be 
no  divorce.  There  will  be  no  divorce  at  all.  That's 
what  I  came  to  tell  you.  I  shall  have  to  pay — in  a  way, 
Stephen.  .  .  .  Not  impossibly.  Don't  think  it  is  anything 
impossible.  .  ,  ," 

352 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

Then  she  bit  her  lips  and  sat  still.  .  .  . 

"My  dear,"  I  whispered,  "if  we  had  taken  one  another 
at  the  beginning.  .  .  ." 

But  she  went  on  with  her  own  thoughts. 

"You  love  those  little  children  of  yours, "  she  said. 
"And  that  trusting  girl- wife.  .  .  .Of  course  you  love  them. 
They're  yours.  Oh!  they're  so  deeply  —  yours.  .  .  . 
Yours.  .  .  ." 

"Oh  my  dear!  don't  torture  me!  I  do  love  them. 
But  I  love  you  too." 

"No,"  she  said,  "not  as  you  do  them." 

I  made  a  movement  of  protest. 

"No,"  she  said,  whitely  radiant  with  a  serenity  I  had 
never  seen  before  in  her  face.  "You  love  me  with  your 
brain.  With  your  soul  if  you  like.  I  know,  my  poor 
bleeding  Stephen! — Aren't  those  tears  there?  Don't 
mind  my  seeing  them,  Stephen.  .  .  .  Poor  dear!  Poor 
dear!  .  .  .  You  love  them  with  your  inmost  heart.  Why 
should  you  mind  that  I  see  you  do?  .  .  .All  my  life 
I've  been  wrong,  Stephen,  and  now  I  know  too  late.  It's 
the  things  we  own  we  love,  the  things  we  buy  with  our 
lives.  .  .  .  Always  I  have  been  hard,  I've  been  a  little  hard. 
.  .  .  Stephen,  my  dear,  I  loved  you,  always  I  have  loved 
you,  and  always  I  have  tried  to  keep  myself.  .  .  .  It's  too 
late.  ...  I  don't  know  why  I  am  talking  like  this.  .  .  .  But 
you  see  I  can  make  a  bargain  now — it's  not  an  impossible 
bargain — and  save  you  and  save  your  wife  and  save  your 
children " 

"But  how?"  I  said,  still  doubting. 

"Never  mind  how,  Stephen.  Don't  ask  me  how  now. 
Nothing  very  difficult.  Easy.  But  I  shall  write  you  no 
more  letters — see  you — no  more.  Never.  And  that's 

353 


THE   PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

why  I  had  to  come,  you  see,  why  I  was  able  to  come  to 
you,  just  to  see  you  and  say  good-bye  to  you,  and  take 
leave  of  you,  dear  Love  that  I  threw  away  and  loved  too 
late " 

She  bit  her  lip  and  faced  me  there,  a  sweet  flushed  living 
thing,  with  a  tear  coursing  down  her  cheek,  and  her  mouth 
now  firm  and  steady. 

"  You  can  stop  this  divorce?"  I  said,  "But  how,  Mary?" 

"No,  don't  ask  me  how.  At  a  price.  It's  a  bargain. 
No,  no!  Don't  think  that, — a  bargain  with  Justin,  but 
not  degrading.  Don't,  my  dear,  let  the  thought  of  it 
distress  you.  I  have  to  give  earnests.  .  .  .  Never,  dear, 
never  through  all  the  dusty  rest  of  life  again  will  you  and 
I  speak  together.  Never!  Even  if  we  come  face  to  face 
once  more — no  word.  ..." 

"Mary,"  I  said,  "what  is  it  you  have  to  do?  You 
speak  as  if What  is  it  Justin  demands?" 

"No!  do  not  ask  me  that.  .  .  .  Tell  me — you  see  we've 
so  much  to  talk  about,  Stephen — tell  me  of  all  you  are 
going  to  do.  Everything.  Because  I've  got  to  make  a 
great  vow  of  renunciation — of  you.  Not  to  think  again — 
not  even  to  think  of  you  again.  .  .  .  No,  no.  I'm  not  even 
to  look  for  you  in  the  papers  any  more.  There's  to  be  no 
tricks  this  time.  And  so  you  see  I  want  to  fill  up  my  mind 
with  you.  To  store  myself  with  you.  Tell  me  your 
work  is  worth  it — that  it's  not  like  the  work  of  everyone. 
Tell  me,  Stephen — that.  I  want  to  believe  that — tre- 
mendously. Don't  be  modest  now.  That  will  be  cruel. 
I  want  to  believe  that  I  am  at  last  to  do  something  that  is 
worth  doing,  something  not  fruitless.  ..." 

"Are  you  to  go  into  seclusion,"  I  asked  suddenly,  "to 

be  a  nun ?" 

354 


THE    LAST   MEETING 

"It  is  something  like  that/'  she  said;  "very  like  that. 
But  I  have  promised — practically — not  to  tell  you  that. 
Tell  me  your  soul,  Stephen,  now.  Give  me  something 
I  may  keep  in  my  mind  through  —  through  all  those 
years  of  waiting.  .  .  ." 

"But  where?"  I  cried.  "What  years  of  waiting?" 
"In  a  lonely  place,  my  dear — among  mountains.  High 
and  away.  Very  beautiful,  but  lonely.  A  lake.  Great 
rocks.  .  .  .  Yes, — like  that  place.  So  odd.  ...  I  shall  have 
so  much  time  to  think,  and  I  shall  have  no  papers — no 
news.  I  mustn't  talk  to  you  of  that.  Don't  let  me  talk 
to  you  of  that.  I  want  to  hear  about  this  world,  this 
world  I  am  going  to  leave,  and  how  you  think  you  are  going 
on  fighting  in  the  hot  and  dusty  struggle — to  make  the 
world  cool  and  kind  and  reasonable,  to  train  minds  better, 
to  broaden  ideas  ...  all  those  things  you  believe  in.  All 
those  things  you  believe  in  and  stick  to — even  when  they 
are  dull.  Now  I  am  leaving  it,  I  begin  to  see  how  fine  it  is 
— to  fight  as  you  want  to  fight.  A  tiresome  inglorious 
lifelong  fight.  .  .  .  You  really  believe,  Stephen?" 


And  then  suddenly  I  read  her  purpose. 

"Mary,"  I  cried,  and  stood  up  and  laid  my  hand  upon 
her  arm,  "Tell  me  what  is  it  you  mean  to  do.  What 
do  you  mean  to  do?" 

She  looked  up  at  me  defensively  and  for  a  moment 
neither  of  us  spoke. 

"Mary,"  I  said,  and  could  not  say  what  was  in  my 
thoughts. 

355 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

"You  are  wrong,"  she  lied  at  last.  .  .  . 

She  stood  up  too  and  faced  me.  I  held  her  shoulder 
and  looked  into  her  eyes. 

The  gong  of  my  little  clock  broke  the  silence. 

"I  must  go,  Stephen,"  she  said.  "I  did  not  see  how 
the  time  was  slipping  by." 

I  began  to  entreat  her  and  she  to  deny.  "You  don't 
understand,"  she  said,  "you  don't  understand.  Stephen! 
— I  had  hoped  you  would  understand.  You  see  life, — 
not  as  I  see  it.  I  wanted — all  sorts  of  splendid  things 
and  you — begin  to  argue.  You  are  shocked,  you  refuse 
to  understand.  .  .  .  No.  No.  Take  your  hands  off  me, 
Stephen  dear,  and  let  me  go.  Let  me  go!" 

"But,"  I  said,  stupid  and  persistent,  "what  are  you 
going  to  do?" 

"I've  told  you,  Stephen,  I've  told  you.  As  much  as  I 
can  tell  you.  And  you  think — this  foolish  thing.  As 
though  I  could  do  that!  Stephen,  if  I  promise,  will  you 
let  me  go?  .  .  ." 

§  12 

My  mind  leaps  from  that  to  the  moment  in  the  after- 
noon, when  torn  by  intolerable  distresses  and  anxiety  I 
knocked  and  rang,  and  again  knocked  at  the  door  of  the 
house  she  occupied  in  South  Street,  with  the  intention  of 
making  one  last  appeal  to  her  to  live — if,  indeed,  it  was 
death  she  had  in  mind.  I  had  let  her  go  from  me  and  in- 
stantly a  hundred  neglected  things  had  come  into  my  head. 
I  could  go  away  with  her,  I  could  threaten  to  die  with  her; 
it  seemed  to  me  that  nothing  in  all  the  world  mattered  if 
only  I  could  thrust  back  the  dark  hand  of  death  to  which 

356 


THE   LAST   MEETING 

she  had  so  manifestly  turned.  I  knew,  I  knew  all  along 
that  her  extorted  promise  would  not  bind  her.  I  knew  and 
I  let  the  faintest  shadow  of  uncertainty  weaken  and  re- 
strain me.  And  I  went  to  her  too  late.  I  saw  instantly 
that  I  was  too  late  when  the  door  opened  and  showed  me 
the  scared  face  of  a  young  footman  whose  eyes  were  red 
with  tears. 

"  Are  you  Doctor ?"  he  asked  of  my  silence. 

"I  want "  I  said.    "I  must  speak  to  Lady  Mary." 

He  was  wordless  for  a  moment.  "She — she  died,  sir," 
he  said.  "She's  died  suddenly."  His  face  quivered,  he 
was  blubbering.  He  couldn't  say  anything  more;  he 
stood  snivelling  in  the  doorway. 

For  some  moments  I  remained  confronting  him  as  if 
I  would  dispute  his  words.  Some  things  the  mind  con- 
tests in  the  face  of  invincible  conviction.  One  wants  to 
thrust  back  time.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER  THE   TWELFTH 
THE  ARRAIGNMENT  OF  JEALOUSY 

§i 

I  SIT  here  in  this  graciously  proportioned  little  room 
which  I  shall  leave  for  ever  next  week,  for  already  your 
mother  begins  to  pack  for  England  again.  I  look  out 
upon  the  neat  French  garden  that  I  have  watched  the 
summer  round,  and  before  me  is  the  pile  of  manuscript 
that  has  grown  here,  the  story  of  my  friendship  and 
love  for  Mary  and  of  its  tragic  end,  and  of  all  the  changes 
of  my  beliefs  and  purposes  that  have  arisen  out  of  that. 
I  had  meant  it  to  be  the  story  of  my  life,  but  how  little 
of  my  life  is  in  it!  It  gives,  at  most,  certain  acute  points, 
certain  salient  aspects.  I  begin  to  realize  for  the  first 
time  how  thin  and  suggestive  and  sketchy  a  thing  any  novel 
or  biography  must  be.  How  we  must  simplify!  How 
little  can  we  convey  the  fullness  of  life,  the  glittering  in- 
terests, the  interweaving  secondary  aspects,  the  dawns 
and  dreams  and  double  refractions  of  experience!  Even 
Mary,  of  whom  I  have  labored  to  tell  you,  seems  not  so 
much  expressed  as  hidden  beneath  these  corrected  sheets. 
She  who  was  so  abundantly  living,  who  could  love  like 
a  burst  of  sunshine  and  give  herself  as  God  gives  the 
world,  is  she  here  at  all  in  this  pile  of  industrious  inexpert 
writing? 

358 


THE   ARRAIGNMENT 

Life  is  so  much  fuller  than  any  book  can  be.  All  this 
story  can  be  read,  I  suppose,  in  a  couple  of  hours  or  so, 
but  I  have  been  living  and  reflecting  upon  and  recon- 
sidering the  substance  of  it  for  over  forty  years.  I  do 
not  see  how  this  book  can  give  you  any  impression  but 
that  of  a  career  all  strained  upon  the  frame  of  one  tragic 
relationship,  yet  no  life  unless  it  is  a  very  short  young  life 
can  have  that  simplicity.  Of  all  the  many  things  I  have 
found  beautiful  and  wonderful,  Mary  was  the  most  won- 
derful to  me,  she  is  in  my  existence  like  a  sunlit  lake  seen 
among  mountains,  of  all  the  edges  by  which  life  has  wrought 
me  she  was  the  keenest.  Nevertheless  she  was  not  all  my 
life,  nor  the  form  of  all  my  life.  For  a  time  after  her 
death  I  could  endure  nothing  of  my  home,  I  could  not  bear 
the  presence  of  your  mother  or  you,  I  hated  the  possi- 
bility of  consolation,  I  went  away  into  Italy,  and  it  was 
only  by  an  enormous  effort  that  I  could  resume  my  in- 
terest in  that  scheme  of  work  to  which  my  life  is  given. 
But  it  is  manifest  I  still  live,  I  live  and  work  and  feel  and 
share  beauty.  .  .  . 

It  seems  to  me  more  and  more  as  I  live  longer,  that  most 
poetry  and  most  literature  and  particularly  the  literature 
of  the  past  is  discordant  with  the  vastness  and  variety, 
the  reserves  and  resources  and  recuperations  of  life  as  we 
live  it  to-day.  It  is  the  expression  of  life  under  cruder  and 
more  rigid  conditions  than  ours,  lived  by  people  who  loved 
and  hated  more  naively,  aged  sooner  and  died  younger 
than  we  do.  Solitary  persons  and  single  events  dominated 
them  as  they  do  not  dominate  us.  We  range  wider,  last 
longer,  and  escape  more  and  more  from  intensity  towards 
understanding.  And  already  this  astounding  blow  be- 
gins to  take  its  place  among  other  events,  as  a  thing 

359 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

strange  and  terrible  indeed,  but  related  to  all  the  strange- 
ness and  mystery  of  life,  part  of  the  universal  mysteries 
of  despair  and  futility  and  death  that  have  troubled  my 
consciousness  since  childhood.  For  a  time  the  death  of 
Mary  obscured  her  life  for  me,  but  now  her  living  presence 
is  more  in  my  mind  again.  I  begin  to  see  that  it  is  the 
reality  of  her  existence  and  not  the  accidents  of  her  end 
that  matter  most.  It  signifies  less  that  she  should  have 
flung  out  of  life  when  it  seemed  that  her  living  could  only 
have  meant  disaster  to  herself  and  to  all  she  loved,  than 
that  all  her  life  should  have  been  hampered  and  restricted. 
Through  all  her  life  this  brave  and  fine  and  beautiful  being 
was  for  the  most  part  of  her  possibilities,  wasted  in  a 
splendid  setting,  magnificently  wasted  if  you  will,  but 
wasted. 

§2 

It  was  that  idea  of  waste  that  dominated  my  mind  in  a 
strange  interview  I  had  with  Justin.  For  it  became  neces- 
sary for  me  to  see  Justin  in  order  that  we  should  stamp 
out  the  whispers  against  her  that  followed  her  death.  He 
had  made  it  seem  an  accidental  death  due  to  an  overdose 
of  the  narcotic  she  employed,  but  he  had  not  been  able 
to  obliterate  altogether  the  beginnings  of  his  divorce 
proceedings.  There  had  been  talk  on  the  part  of  clerks 
and  possible  witnesses.  But  of  all  that  I  need  not  tell 
you  here;  what  matters  is  that  Justin  and  I  could  meet 
without  hatred  or  violence.  I  met  a  Justin  grey-haired 
and  it  seemed  to  me  physically  shrunken,  more  than  ever 
slow-speaking,  with  his  habit  of  attentive  silences  more 
marked  and  that  dark  scar  spread  beyond  his  brows. 

360 


THE    ARRAIGNMENT 

We  had  come  to  our  parting,  we  had  done  our  business 
with  an  affectation  of  emotional  aloofness,  and  then 
suddenly  he  gripped  me  by  the  arm.  "Stratton,"  he 

said,  "we  two We  killed  her.  We  tore  her  to 

pieces  between  us.  .  .  ." 

I  made  no  answer  to  this  outbreak. 

' '  We  tore  her  to  pieces, ' '  he  repeated.  ' '  It's  so  damned 
silly.  One  gets  angry — like  an  animal." 

I  became  grotesquely  anxious  to  assure  him  that,  in- 
deed, she  and  I  had  been,  as  they  say,  innocent  throughout 
our  last  day  together.  "You  were  wrong  in  all  that,"  I 
said.  "She  kept  her  faith  with  you.  We  never  planned 

to  meet  and  when  we  met .  If  we  had  been  brother 

and  sister .  Indeed  there  was  nothing." 

"I  suppose,"  he  said,  " I  ought  to  be  glad  of  that.  But 
now  it  doesn't  seem  to  matter  very  much.  We  killed  her. 
.  .  .  What  does  that  matter  to  me  now?" 


§3 

And  it  is  upon  this  effect  of  sweet  and  beautiful  possi- 
bilities, caught  in  the  net  %f  animal  jealousies  and  thought- 
less motives  and  ancient  rigid  institutions,  that  I  would 
end  this  writing.  In  Mary,  it  seems  to  me,  I  found  both 
womanhood  and  fellowship,  I  found  what  many  have 
dreamt  of,  love  and  friendship  freely  given,  and  I  could 
do  nothing  but  clutch  at  her  to  make  her  my  possession. 
I  would  not  permit  her  to  live  except  as  a  part  of  my  life. 
I  see  her  now  and  understand  her  better  than  when  she' 
was  alive,  I  recall  things  that  she  said  and  wrote  and  it  is 
clear  to  me,  clearer  perhaps  than  it  ever  was  to  her,  that 

.361 


THE    PASSIONATE    FRIENDS 

she,  with  her  resentment  at  being  in  any  sense  property, 
her  self-reliant  thought,  her  independence  of  standard,  was 
the  very  prototype  of  that  sister-lover  who  must  replace 
the  seductive  and  abject  womanhood,  owned,  mastered 
and  deceiving,  who  waste  the  world  to-day.  And  she  was 
owned,  she  was  mastered,  she  was  forced  into  concealment. 
What  alternative  was  there  for  her?  What  alternative  is 
there  for  any  woman?  She  might  perhaps  have  kept  her 
freedom  by  some  ill-paid  work  and  at  the  price  of  every 
other  impulse  in  her  swift  and  eager  nature.  *She  might 
have  become  one  of  those  poor  neuters,  an  independent 
woman.  .  .  .  Life  was  made  impossible  for  her  and  she 
was  forced  to  die,  according  to  the  fate  of  all  untimely 
things.  She  was  destroyed,  not  merely  by  the  uncon- 
sidered,  undisciplined  passions  of  her  husband  and  her 
lover,  but  by  the  vast  tradition  that  sustains  and  enforces 
the  subjugation  of  her  sex.  What  I  had  from  her,  and 
what  she  was,  is  but  a  mere  intimation  of  all  that  she  and 
I  might  have  made  of  each  other  and  the  world. 

And  perhaps  in  this  story  I  have  said  enough  for  you 
to  understand  why  Mary  has  identified  herself  with  some- 
thing world-wide,  has  added  to  herself  a  symbolical  value, 
and  why  it  is  I  find  in  the  whole  crowded  spectacle  of  man- 
kind, a  quality  that  is  also  hers,  a  sense  of.  fine  things  en- 
tangled and  stifled  and  unable  to  free  themselves  from 
the  ancient  limiting  jealousies  which  law  and  custom 
body.  For  I  know  that  a  growing  multitude  of  men 
,  and  women  outwear  the  ancient  ways.  The  blood- 
vstamed  organized  jealousies  of  religious  intolerance,  the 
delusions  of  nationality  and  cult  and  race,  that  black 
hatred  which  simple  people  and  young  people  and  com- 
mon people  cherish  against  all  that  is  not  in  the  likeness 

362 


THE   ARRAIGNMENT 

of  themselves,  cease  to  be  the  undisputed  ruling  forces 
of  our  collective  life.  We  want  to  emancipate  our  lives 
from  this  slavery  and  these  stupidities,  from  dull  hatreds 
and  suspicion.  The  ripening  mind  of  our  race  tires  of 
these  boorish  and  brutish  and  childish  things.  A  spirit 
that  is  like  hers,  arises  and  increases  in  human  affairs,  a 
spirit  that  demands  freedom  and  gracious  living  as  our 
inheritance  too  long  deferred,  and  I  who  loved  her  so 
blindly  and  narrowly  now  love  her  spirit  with  a  dawning 
understanding. 

I  will  not  be  content  with  that  compromise  of  jealousies 
which  is  the  established  life  of  humanity  to-day.  I  give 
myself,  and  if  I  can  I  will  give  you,  to  the  destruction  of 
jealousy  and  of  the  forms  and  shelters  and  instruments  of 
jealousy,  both  in  my  own  self  and  in  the  thought  and  laws 
and  usage  of  the  world.  ^ 


THE  END 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


£& 


REC'D  LD 


OCT2    '64-3 


NOV04  1991 


AUTO  DISC  00130^1 


I 


LD  21A-50m-4,'59 
(A1724slO)476B 


VD     / aor^ 
U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


